Head of Talent Management Programs and PMO

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 educating our users, experimenting with big ideas, making fact-based decisions, and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. You'll have limitless learning opportunities and daily collaborations with world-class minds — while doing work that's both meaningful and fun. Join our life-changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world. Read our blog to learn more. About the role...We're hiring a Head of Talent Management Programs & PMO to architect, run, and continuously improve Duolingo's most critical talent systems. Reporting to the Head of Talent Management & Rewards, you will translate people strategy into intuitive, scalable programs and a disciplined operating cadence—spanning performance and promotion frameworks, talent reviews and succession, manager enablement, and the portfolio governance that keeps everything on time and high‐quality. You'll build the "through line" across Talent Management and Rewards, with clear metrics and crisp execution that match Duolingo's clock speed.ð§ You will...Talent Program Architecture & Strategy End-to-End Program Design: Lead the evolution of core talent cycles, including performance management, 360-degree feedback, and promotion frameworks, ensuring they align with a high-performance culture. Competency & Career Mapping: Architect standardized competency models and career ladders that provide clear, transparent growth trajectories for all global functions. Succession & Talent Readiness: Design and facilitate the talent review process, identifying high-potential leaders and building a data-backed succession pipeline to future-proof the organization. Manager Enablement: Partner with cross-functional partners to ensure talent programs provide managers with the tools and insights needed to lead high-performing teams. Portfolio Leadership & PMO Governance Strategic Roadmap Management: Own the TMR integrated roadmap, maintaining centralized visibility into project health, dependencies, and resource allocation to ensure on-time delivery. Operational Excellence: Establish and iterate on a "lean" project management methodology that prioritizes speed and impact over administrative overhead. Cross-Functional Orchestration: Act as the primary connector between Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, and Business Leadership to ensure talent initiatives are integrated and cohesive. Performance Analytics & Insights The Talent Dashboard: Develop an enterprise performance framework using key metrics (e.g., promotion velocity, retention, talent density) to measure the ROI of our people programs. First-Principles Analysis: Leverage data to conduct root-cause analysis on organizational trends, providing executive leadership with actionable insights to inform policy and resource decisions. You have...8+ years in Talent Management, People Operations and portfolio/program management, including senior‐level ownership of company‐wide talent programs in fast‐paced, product‐led or high‐growth environments. Comfort and curiosity with AI tools as applied to talent program design, analytics, and portfolio management, with a clear sense of where automation accelerates the work and where human judgment remains irreplaceable. A proven track record building or leading a PMO, with clear outcomes shipping complex, multi‐stakeholder programs on time. Depth in modern talent practices: performance systems, org design, competency/career frameworks, succession planning, and manager effectiveness. Expert operational rigor with program/project management frameworks and process improvement (e.g., PMP/PgMP/Agile, Lean principles) applied pragmatically. Strong data fluency and a product mindset for people analytics—able to design dashboards that tell a story, inform trade‐offs, and drive accountability. Excellent executive communication and influence; you simplify complexity, align stakeholders, and make crisp, well‐reasoned recommendations. Exceptional candidates will have...Talent Subject Matter Expertise: Deep understanding of modern talent management theories, including performance psychology, organizational design, and succession modeling. Operational Rigor: Expert-level proficiency in project management frameworks (PMP, PgMP, or Agile) and process improvement methodologies (Lean Six Sigma).Strategic Influence: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to simplify complex operational challenges for executive stakeholders. Data Fluency: A "product mindset" regarding HR data capable of building dashboards that tell a story and drive accountability. The offered salary is dependent upon several factors, including work experience, skills, and internal peer comparisons. The posted range is subject to change in the future. For this role, base salary is supplemented by equity compensation. We encourage you to talk with your recruiter for more information related to compensation for this role!