Staff Technical Program Manager

This is a high-impact L4 TPM role based in New York City, starting in one of Duolingo's fastest-moving pillars: Growth.

You'll partner closely with engineering and product leadership to drive complex, cross-functional initiatives that span multiple teams and require someone who can bring structure, alignment, and momentum.

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the roadmap for high-impact, cross-functional initiatives in the Growth pillar and beyond, aligning engineering and product leadership around a shared vision, sequencing the work, and holding teams accountable to outcomes.
• Lead organizational change management as engineering teams adopt new ways of working , building alignment, communicating progress to executives and ICs alike, and helping teams internalize new processes and tooling.
• Lead the delivery of strategic, high-impact cross-functional initiatives from conceptualization to launch, operating with significant autonomy across multiple workstreams.
• Partner with engineering, product, data science, QA, and executive leadership to ensure communication and alignment; serve as the connective tissue between Duolingo strategy and day-to-day execution.
• Leverage deep technical expertise to develop detailed plans with key milestones and goals, identify and mitigate risks, resolve dependencies, remove blockers, and ensure timely and smooth launches.
• Drive decisions when difficult tradeoffs must be made, including those with cross-organizational or company-level impact; model how to navigate hard problems with analytical rigor and a calm, decisive presence.
• Identify systemic issues impacting delivery efficiency company-wide and take swift, collaborative action to resolve them.
• Guide and develop other TPMs and engineering leads, scaling best practices across teams and continuously improving how the organization operates.

Requirements:

• Proven experience as a TPM, Engineering Lead, or Engineering Manager.
• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent degree or experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale technical transformation programs with measurable organizational impact.
• Strong executive presence and influence in a matrix environment.
• Deep technical credibility.
• Proven ability to build and implement detailed plans that account for ambiguity, dependencies, and technical complexity.
• A track record of standing up new programs or practices from scratch in ambiguous, high-visibility environments.
• Ability to relocate to NYC.

Exceptional candidates will have:

• Strong knowledge of software engineering, systems engineering, or similar hands-on technical experience, in addition to program management experience.
• Strong conceptual fluency in LLM-based products and AI infrastructure.
• Experience running programs that include machine learning, large datasets, or AI/ML infrastructure.
• Experience working with AWS at scale.