Backend Software Engineer (Senior/Staff/Senior Staff)

Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. It’s a big mission, and that’s where you come in!

At Duolingo, you’ll join a team that cares about finding innovative solutions to complex technical problems, running countless experiments (300+ at a time!) with our massive user base to make data-driven decisions, and educating our users and employees alike. You’ll have limitless learning opportunities, mentorship and collaboration with world-class minds, and a variety of projects with large scopes — while doing work that’s both fun and meaningful. 

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

About the role

As a Backend Engineer you will work on building the APIs that power our products and give our learners a best-in-class experience.

Our microservices infrastructure is composed of hundreds of endpoints serving hundreds of millions of requests per day. You will partner with your team members on identifying requirements and designing services that are fast, resilient, and cost effective. You will have ownership over the entire lifecycle of your services and associated infrastructure, and ensure they are always operating well.

Below you can find more information about teams we're hiring for:

Architecture Team: 

• The Architecture team’s mission is to ensure that Duolingo’s software continues to scale as we grow. We work on some of the largest and most critical infrastructure run by Duolingo and provide tools and best practice guidance to teams as they look to create new features and services.  In this role, you will lay the groundwork for the future success of Duolingo’s software platforms.

• As an engineer on the Scoring team for the Duolingo English Test, you will help advance the state of the art in language testing. You will work closely with AI researchers and assessment scientists to pioneer innovative and AI-driven ways to assess language ability, while maintaining critical infrastructure and strengthening the test’s reliability. You will advance the team’s mission to lower barriers and increase opportunities for English language learners everywhere.

• The Proctoring Operations team’s mission is to ensure that we provide high-quality and efficient human proctoring for all Duolingo English Test tests. In this role, you will take on full-stack web development work. You will primarily work on the ‘proctor portal’ an in-house tool used by contractors for proctoring the test. You will also work closely with the anti-cheating team to take new signals developed by them and put them in the hands of proctors.

  You will...

• 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

  You have...

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related technical field
• Strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design
• Experience programming in Java, Python, or Kotlin
• Solid understanding of one or more database technologies

  Exceptional candidates will have...

• Industry experience building high-traffic APIs using public cloud providers

Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.

We will do everything we can within reason to make sure that your interview takes place in an environment that fairly and accurately assesses your skills. If you need assistance or accommodation, please contact your recruiter.

Duolingo is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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