Director of Growth Marketing Strategy

About the role

You will own the design and execution of Duolingo's global growth marketing strategy, defining how the company identifies, tests, and scales new initiatives that drive sustainable user growth. You will act as a senior thought partner to marketing leadership, shaping the growth agenda and translating complex data into clear strategic frameworks. You will develop the playbooks and governance structures that allow country teams to evaluate, prioritize, and scale their own growth bets with confidence. You will manage a small high-performing team, mentoring talent as the function expands and matures. This role requires comfort operating from high-level vision down to granular numbers and metrics. You will be responsible for turning a portfolio of experiments into a coherent global growth story that advances our mission of providing free education to all.

Key facts

What you'll do

Develop and evolve Duolingo's global growth strategy across acquisition and reactivation, defining where the highest leverage opportunities exist.

Create and steward the frameworks used to size, measure, and review growth initiatives, including budget allocation approaches, KPI design, attribution methodology, and go/no-go criteria.

Partner with country marketing managers to pressure-test the growth case behind their proposals, aligning on goals, budget sizing, and measurement before any investment.

Build the entry strategy for new markets and collaborate closely with country teams to stand up launches, guiding the plan from initial hypothesis to early results.

Run the cross-functional forum where growth cases are pressure-tested, providing early input, rigorous validity checks, and honest read-outs on performance.

Manage and develop a small team, scaling people, processes, and tools as the growth function increases in scope and complexity.

Synthesize cross-market results into shared learnings, surfacing patterns and feeding insights back into planning cycles and future bets.

Act as a senior translator between data and marketing leadership, delivering crisp recommendations and portfolio-level updates that inform resource allocation.

Champion a high analytical bar across the growth function, mentoring your team and partners toward sharper problem framing, cleaner measurement, and more credible forecasting.

Own the end-to-end growth process, from ideation through experimentation, measurement, and large-scale rollout, ensuring rigor and accountability at every stage.

Establish governance guardrails and decision frameworks that enable rapid experimentation while protecting brand integrity and user trust.

Collaborate with product and engineering teams to identify growth opportunities embedded in the product experience and define testable hypotheses.

Evaluate the incremental impact of growth initiatives, applying robust methods to distinguish signal from noise and correlation from causation.

Represent the growth strategy to executive stakeholders, articulating the rationale, trade-offs, and expected outcomes of proposed investments.

Requirements

You must possess a bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience, demonstrating a strong academic background or professional trajectory.

You bring 8+ years of experience in strategic consulting, consumer strategy, growth marketing, or a related field, with a track record of shaping growth strategy for a consumer brand at scale.

You have a proven history of driving growth strategy and contributing to measurable business outcomes, not merely executing isolated projects.

You are experienced in managing or developing people, or you are ready to step into a first direct report role and invest in their growth.

You possess deep analytical judgment, fluency in experimentation, KPI and attribution design, incrementality assessment, and structured problem solving.

You have the skepticism required to separate correlation from causation and real signal from a compelling narrative.

You have demonstrated success collaborating with and influencing senior cross-functional and international partners across diverse time zones.

You communicate with excellence in writing and speaking, delivering clear, decision-ready recommendations to marketing leadership.

You can move fluidly between long-range strategy and hands-on detail, thriving in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.

You are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information while maintaining a high bar for evidence and rigor.

Nice to have

Experience working with international markets and multi-country campaigns in consumer internet or education sectors.

Background in education technology, language learning, or a mission-driven consumer product is a strong advantage.

Familiarity with product analytics platforms, experimentation systems, and data visualization tools.

Practical notes

This role is based in New York, NY, and requires availability during standard business hours.

Travel may be required to visit Duolingo offices or meet with international country teams as needed.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this position.