AI Research Engineer

Key Skills

Machine learning techniques, AI technology, E-learning development, Open source project tools

Job Description

Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. But we’ve got more left to do — and that's where you come in!

Duolingo is the most popular language-learning application in the world, with over 500 million users and over half a billion exercises completed daily. Beyond our core learning product, we have also entered into literacy with Duolingo ABC and English proficiency testing with the Duolingo English Test.

We are passionate about educating our users, making fact-based decisions, and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. We offer meaningful work, limitless learning opportunities, and collaboration with world-class minds. Come brighten your life and over half a billion more!

The AI Research Engineer role at Duolingo is quite broad, with responsibilities ranging from engaging with the research community via publishing papers and attending conferences, to bringing the latest advances in AI to our product by collaborating with our research scientists and software engineers. Research engineers work on unique problems at the forefront of EdTech, including modeling and assessing learner proficiency, offering insightful feedback to our learners, extending our content and tooling to other languages, securing the Duolingo English Test against cheating and abuse, and more.

Research engineers are expected to both innovate and implement. As such, we look for applicants with both an accomplished research portfolio as well as a strong software engineering background. AI research engineers often own projects from end-to-end, beginning with ideation, data collection, and R&D, and culminating in putting your work in front of our learners.

You Will...

• Solve our most ambitious problems with the right tool for the task
• Collaborate cross-functionally to bring your ideas to life in the product
• Identify problems, prototype solutions, evaluate their return on investment, and then implement the best solution at scale to improve the lives of our millions of learners each day
• Share your findings both within Duolingo as well as to the broader research community

You Have...

• A creative, interdisciplinary, and entrepreneurial approach to R&D
• Strong debugging and critical thinking skills

Requirements: (5 max)

• M.S./Ph.D. in computer science or related technical field
• 2+ years of post-doctoral and/or industry experience
• A portfolio of impactful work, in the form of (for example) publications, open-source projects, or AI internships
• Experience implementing ML systems at scale
• Ability to relocate to Pittsburgh, PA

Exceptional Candidates Will Have...

• 5+ years of post-doctoral and/or industry experience
• Experience mentoring or managing junior scientists or engineers
• A strong publication record