Regional People Lead, EMEA

Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.

We're looking for a Regional People Lead to serve as both a senior People Business Partner and the operational owner for our growing EMEA presence.

Strategic Partnership

• Serve as the senior People Partner to EMEA leaders, building deep business understanding and advising on org design, performance, team health, and growth.
• Lead engagement, inclusion, and talent planning initiatives across the region, and drive talent density in partnership with TA.
• Guide leaders and teams through organizational change, translating global OKRs and TMR programs into plans that fit regional context and surfacing gaps back to TMR.
• Own complex employee relations and higher-risk people matters across the region, including investigations, grievances, performance and disciplinary processes, and settlement agreements, applying employment-law judgment and knowing when to bring in Legal or the central team.
• Use people data and engagement insight to spot organizational health trends early and recommend action.

Regional Operations & Compliance

• Own regional People operations end to end, leading a People Operations Manager who delivers day-to-day execution across direct entities and PEO-supported markets, while staying close enough to the detail to catch compliance and payroll risk yourself.
• Own the regional PEO/EOR relationship, including monthly payroll submissions across multiple calendars, employment changes, terminations, new-country implementation, and vendor management across PEO-supported markets.
• Act as the regional authority on employment compliance across direct and PEO markets, including UK Right to Work, UK and German contract and employment-law requirements, and country-specific PEO frameworks; ensure local legal review where required.
• Serve as the regional execution layer for centrally-owned systems, validating data against source documents and ensuring global processes function correctly in local practice.
• Serve as regional liaison to Finance on budgets, vendor contracts, expense management, and reporting, maintaining strong internal controls and documentation.
• Identify repetitive regional processes and improve them through better workflow and automation where appropriate, reducing cross-time-zone friction without compromising local compliance judgment.

Recruiting & Workplace Experience

• Partner with Talent Acquisition on regional hiring strategy, offer decisions, and locally relevant onboarding.
• Partner with London workplace operations on facilities, safety, and vendor management, and lead regional events and programming.
• Ensure a strong employee experience across hybrid and remote environments regionwide, providing a consistent point of contact through the employee lifecycle.

Global Representation

• Represent EMEA in global People forums and planning cycles, ensuring regional voice shapes global policy rather than just receiving it.
• Bring clarity and consistent ownership to how global People processes land locally.

Requirements

• Experience in HR, People Business Partnering, or regional People operations, including work supporting multi-country teams across EMEA.
• Hands-on experience managing employees through a PEO or EOR provider across multiple EMEA markets.
• Strong knowledge of European employment practices, labor law, and compliance across multiple jurisdictions, including the UK and Germany.
• Demonstrated ability to move seamlessly between strategic advising and hands-on operational execution.
• Experience scaling People operations and processes in a fast-growing, distributed environment.
• Sound judgment owning complex employee relations and higher-risk people matters, grounded in employment law.
• A collaborative partner to Finance on budgets, vendor management, and reporting.
• Strong cross-cultural communication and the judgment to know when to escalate, when to decide, and when to bring the global team in.
• Fluency across core People and HRIS systems, with the rigor to keep data accurate between global platforms and local source documents.