Director of Learning Design, Immersive Language Learning

Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. Its a big mission and thats where you come in!

At Duolingo youll join a team that cares about educating our users experimenting with big ideas making fact-based decisions and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. Youll have limitless learning opportunities and daily collaborations with world-class minds while doing work thats both meaningful and fun.

Join our life-changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world.

Read our blog to learn more.

About the role...

As Director of Learning Design for Immersive Language Learning you will be the pedagogical and creative lead for Duolingos longform narrative and audiofirst experiences Stories DuoRadio Adventures and future immersive formats. Youll set the vision for how compelling storytelling design and audio can accelerate realworld language gains and youll turn that vision into products millions love. Youll lead a multidisciplinary team of learning designers and partner closely with product leadership to ship delightful effective and distinctly Duolingo experiences at global scale. This job is based in Pittsburgh or New York.

:brain: You will...

• Ship effective immersive learning at scale: partner with Product Design and Engineering to translate pedagogy into creative storytelling experiences that build listening speaking reading and writing skills
• Lead and develop a worldclass team of learning designers leveling up their craft velocity and effectiveness
• Leverage AI thoughtfully: oversee humanintheloop workflows to generate high-quality learning content where Duolingo characters come to life and our distinctive brand voice is reflected
• Establish content quality systems (guidelines rubrics review workflows) that ensure linguistic accuracy high creative bar cohesive storytelling difficulty calibration and high quality across languages
• Drive an experimentled practice: foster an outcome-focused culture confirm hypotheses via A/B tests align on success metrics and assist with analyzing learning and engagement impact
• Explore whats next: develop and validate roadmaps for novel immersive experiences that extend Duolingos impact

:check: You have...

• Depth in language learning design: typically 10 years designing consumer language learning products with proven impact at scale
• Creative instincts and taste: ability to shape narrative in immersive experiences and give specific actionable creative feedback
• People leadership: 5 years leading multidisciplinary teams; experience managing managers and setting high bars for craft and delivery
• Product sense: intuition for simple lovable mobile experiences and how story pacing and mechanics can drive motivation
• Operational rigor: proficiency in large-scale content operations QA processes and tooling to maintain quality across multiple languages; ideally experience with humanintheloop AI workflows
• Outstanding communication: clear kind and persuasive across audiences including executive and crossfunctional

:star: Exceptional candidates will have...

• Graduate degree in Education HCI Applied Linguistics SLA TESOL Linguistics Learning Science Cognitive Science or a relevant language field
• Experience with storytelling interactive fiction/branching narratives or game narrative design especially for educational purposes
• Proficiency in one or more languages beyond English and comfort reviewing content across multiple languages