Senior/Software Engineer (Backend)
Company: Duolingo
Location: New York, NY
Salary: $182.8k - $247.3k per year
Type: Full-time
Posted: 2026-10-09
About this role
- Duolingo’s Monetization pillar builds the systems that fund our mission — from subscription packaging and advertising to ML-powered personalization
- As a Backend Engineer on the Ads team, you’ll work on a product engineering team responsible for growing and scaling Duolingo’s ads business: high-quality ads that delight learners, fit seamlessly into the product experience, and meaningfully contribute to our bottom line
- The team owns ad serving, mediation and demand, in-product ad formats and surfaces, and more. You’ll work cross-functionally with product, design, data science, machine learning, and ad operations
- As a member of the AI Tooling and Ecosystem Team, you will be responsible for developing and maintaining tools and services that power Duolingo’s use of AI in the product
- You will design systems for managing datasets, evaluating the performance of AI models, and building AI workflows
- You will help shape how Duolingo builds features using AI, enabling teams to easily define quality metrics, combine human and AI feedback, and compare model performance across different use cases
- Collaborate on software projects with product design and backend aspects
- Develop, release, and maintain backend services and/or infrastructure
- Lead individual project priorities, milestones, and ensure we’re always shipping
### Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision for employees as well as eligible partners and dependents
- Mental health benefits such as therapy sessions and coaching to support you to be your best self
- Fertility benefits to support your family planning journey
- Fully paid parental and adoption leave
- Fully paid subscription to Care.com and paid backup days for dependents and your fur family
- 401(k) with generous match and immediate vesting
- 20 days of paid time off, with two additional weeks off for winter break
- First-time home buyer bonus (in Pittsburgh)
- Competitive salaries and equity
- Yearly stipend for professional development
- Transpo...