Senior Engineering Manager, AI Platform
About this role
Engineers who thrive in ambiguous environments and want to shape how millions of learners interact with artificial intelligence will find a natural home here. This position leads the newly formed AI Tooling and Ecosystem Team at Duolingo, directing a group of five to six software and AI engineers based in Pittsburgh or New York.
The team builds the centralized systems, prompt workflows, and evaluation pipelines that power AI features across the product. Daily responsibilities involve shaping multi-quarter roadmaps, streamlining development processes for product teams, and partnering closely with infrastructure and data science groups to deliver reliable and cost-efficient capabilities.
What you will do
- Lead the development of shared tools and services that empower product teams to build AI-driven features.
- Manage internal systems and workflows handling AI datasets, prompts, and evaluation pipelines.
- Establish structured processes for defining success metrics, selecting models, and building prompt optimization loops.
- Streamline AI development flows so engineers with varying expertise can deploy systems quickly.
- Partner with AI Core Infrastructure to ensure workflows remain reliable, measurable, and cost-efficient.
- Collaborate across product, data science, and platform groups to deliver new tooling addressing common use-cases.
- Own multi-quarter roadmaps and drive cross-functional alignment to accelerate feature velocity.
What you need
- Demonstrated experience leading, managing, and building teams of software or AI engineers.
- A proven track record of constructing AI infrastructure or user-facing products powered by artificial intelligence.
- Familiarity with AI evaluation techniques that integrate human feedback and LLM-as-a-judge methodologies.
- Strong cross-functional communication and leadership skills to align multiple technical partners on execution.
- Comfort operating through ambiguity within a rapidly evolving technical landscape.
- A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- The ability to work from or relocate to either Pittsburgh, PA or New York, NY.
Nice to have
- Hands-on experience building scale evaluation systems and human-in-the-loop data pipelines.
- A background in developing internal platform tools and services delivered through APIs, MCPs, and web GUIs.
- Experience handling build versus buy decisions and setting long-term roadmaps for internal customers.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
Where is this job located?
Candidates must have the ability to work from or relocate to the company offices in Pittsburgh, PA or New York, NY.
What is the salary range for this role?
The base salary range spans from $204,000 to $306,000 USD, which is dependent upon work experience, skills, and internal peer comparisons. Base compensation is also supplemented by equity.
What team will this manager lead?
This person manages the newly established AI Tooling and Ecosystem Team, leading a group of five to six engineers focused on internal AI infrastructure and tools.