Staff AI Research Engineer

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.

We are looking for an experienced AI Research Engineer to join our Speech team. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record as an AI research engineer, with experience across various machine learning techniques, and a particular focus on speech modeling: ASR, TTS, speech-to-speech models, audio tokenization, and more. They will have experience at all levels of the ML stack, including feature engineering, developing training data, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, benchmarks and evaluations, deployment, and monitoring. On the Speech team, we’re training custom models to understand the speech of non-native learners, working closely to support product teams working on features like Video Call and the learning path.

• Join a full-stack team of frontend, backend, and other AI Research engineers, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Contribute to the development and training of speech models and large-scale neural network models.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand their needs, to align the models’ outputs with company objectives.
• Participate in and help drive strategic product and business decision making as a member of the Speech leadership group. 
• Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in machine learning, particularly in speech models, and apply this knowledge to drive advancements in our projects.
• Mentor team members, providing guidance and support in their professional development.
• Ensure the delivery of high-quality, scalable, and efficient machine learning solutions.

• Proven experience as an AI research engineer, for example, in speech recognition, TTS, LLMs, or related fields.
• Strong background in training and fine-tuning large models in an applied setting.
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field with a focus on machine learning or artificial intelligence, or equivalent experience.
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to manage and inspire a team.
• Deep understanding of machine learning concepts, frameworks, and best practices.