Director of Payroll

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.

You will...

• Champion our Culture: Bring energy, vision, and initiative to help us drive our culture forward by leading a “people first” payroll function.
• Be the Leader: Lead payroll strategy and operations, ensuring that they result in timely, accurate, and compliant execution of payrolls, filings, reports, and audits.
• Be the Specialist: Provide experienced guidance to establishing, evaluating, updating, and scaling processes and controls in conjunction with regulatory, business, and/or system updates.
• Be a Strategic Partner: Collaborate with key partners to ensure the payroll operation serves their needs and vice versa.
• Be Agile: Develop and execute decision-making and organizational change plans when identifying a need to improve part of the payroll operation.
• Test Everything: Aim to establish a fail-proof system of controls, guardrails, and reporting to ensure that all payroll processes and integrations are accurate and compliant.
• Ensure Compliance: Collaborate across the Finance, Accounting, and Legal teams to fulfill all vital compliance, auditing, and reporting requirements.
• Build Relationships: Foster relationships internally and externally to ensure a diversity of knowledge and resources are considered to develop our payroll operations.
• Provide ad hoc support to the People Team, as needed.

You have...

• Payroll and Management Experience. You have knowledge in payroll operations, regulatory requirements, and SOX, and have led and/or grown a payroll team.
• Public Company Experience. You have been in a payroll management role for a public company that issues various types of equity.
• Communication Skills. You demonstrate that you can communicate effectively across different groups to reach our goals.
• Self-Awareness and Integrity. You demonstrate a strong understanding of the confidentiality and integrity that comes with leading payroll and other employee demographic data.

Requirements...

• Ability to work in or relocate to Pittsburgh, PA or New York, NY.
• Minimum of bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of experience in payroll for a multi-state and global company, including management experience and experience in a public company with equity.
• Detail-orientation, organizational, and project management skills that ensure that accuracy, efficiency, and compliance are optimized and objectives are created and met.
• Proficient with Workday and related payroll, HRIS, and financial systems.
• Experience implementing payroll systems.

Exceptional candidates will have...

• Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) certification.
• Workday Certified Payroll Expert.
• Experience implementing relevant systems and processes to serve a fast-growing start-up environment.
• Experience bringing organization to teams and streamlining processes within organizations.
• Experience working with 3rd Party Managed Payroll Service 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.

By applying for this position your data will be processed as per the Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice.

We post a multi-level salary range for all of our roles.

This is not inclusive of the rest of our awesome portfolio that includes equity compensation and world-class benefits. Our salary ranges are the same for all US locations. Your recruiter can share more details about the range for a specific level during the hiring process. The actual salary within the range is determined by many factors including but not limited to, skills, experience, education, and internal equity.

Salary Range: $128,000—$231,600 USD