{"id":3994521,"url":"https://alion.io/job/duolingo-staff-security-engineer","title":"Staff Security Engineer","company":{"id":19161,"name":"Duolingo","domain":"duolingo.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/duolingo-blog","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":84,"open_postings":11,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.636,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":56,"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"}},"role":"Security","role_family":"Security","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":204000,"max":306000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":306000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Threat Modeling","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-09T21:11:46Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-09","last_verified_at":"2026-11-10T00:44:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"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!\nAt 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.\nJoin our life-changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world.\nAbout the role\nAs a Staff Security Engineer, you will shape and deliver Duolingo’s security strategy, safeguarding our learners, employees, systems, and services. You’ll identify the highest-impact security problems, lead complex initiatives from proposal through production, and build durable security capabilities across our applications and cloud infrastructure. Working across Engineering, Product, Legal, Finance, and IT, you’ll make practical risk decisions, establish secure-by-default patterns, and help teams ship safely at scale. This role is based in New York City. We know great candidates bring different combinations of experience. If you meet some or most of the qualifications below, we encourage you to apply!\n:brain: You will...\nSet technical direction for security across Duolingo’s applications, cloud infrastructure, and engineering systems.\nLead complex, multi-team security initiatives from problem definition and design through implementation, measurement, and ongoing ownership.\nDesign and build scalable security services, controls, and automation that prevent, detect, and remediate risks with minimal manual effort.\nPartner with engineering teams to threat model systems, review architecture and code, prioritize risks, and deliver practical mitigations.\nStrengthen security across the software-development lifecycle, including secrets management, dependency security, vulnerability management, and CI/CD controls.\nEvaluate Duolingo’s security posture, use evidence to identify the highest-impact investments, and define measurable outcomes for security programs.\nLead technical response to significant security incidents and translate lessons learned into lasting improvements.\nEstablish reusable secure-by-default patterns for cloud and application infrastructure, including infrastructure as code.\nCommunicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to engineering teams and company leaders.\nMentor engineers, scale security knowledge through documentation and guidance, and raise the technical bar across Engineering.\n:check: You have...\nA track record of leading large, complex security engineering initiatives across multiple teams from proposal through production.\nDeep experience in at least two of the following areas: application security, product security, cloud security, infrastructure security, detection and response, or security automation.\nStrong software-engineering skills in one or more programming or scripting languages and experience building reliable production systems or internal platforms.\nExperience securing cloud environments and designing controls for identity, networking, data protection, secrets, logging, and workload security.\nExperience applying threat modeling, architecture review, code review, and vulnerability analysis to real-world systems.\nExperience using infrastructure as code and CI/CD to deliver repeatable, testable, and secure configurations.\nSound judgment in balancing security risk, engineering effort, product needs, and business priorities.\nClear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence stakeholders with different technical backgrounds.\nThe ability to work from or relocate to New York City.\n:star: Exceptional candidates will have...\nExperience building a security program or technical capability from an early stage and scaling it across an engineering organization.\nExperience securing large, multi-account or multi-cloud environments, particularly AWS and GCP.\nExperience creating security platforms or paved-road patterns adopted broadly by engineers.\nExperience leading high-severity incident response and driving durable improvements afterward.\nExperience applying AI-assisted tooling to security analysis, remediation, or control validation.\nThe 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!\nSalary Range:\n$204,000—$306,000 USD\nBenefits: Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.\nJob Alerts: Sign up for job alerts here.\nAccommodations: 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 .\nEqual Employment Opportunity: 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.\nFraud Warning: Unfortunately, there is a rise in scammers pretending to be real Duolingo employees. Duolingo and our employees will never ask for your Social Security number, bank details, or passport info, and we’ll never ask you to deposit a check, purchase equipment, or exchange money during the interview process. Real Duolingo employees always use an email that ends in @duolingo.com or @recruiting.duolingo.com. Stay alert and double-check these details before sharing any information.\nBy applying for this position your data will be processed as per the Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6320,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Language Learning","E-learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-10T00:44:25Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 104 · green card filings: 19","filings_12m":104,"filings_prev_12m":41,"green_card_filings_12m":19,"median_offered_wage_usd":158638,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-09T07:32:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":3}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":56,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-10T02:13:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":306000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/duolingo-staff-security-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/duolingo-staff-security-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T02:13:00Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5226,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":19161},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=19161"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fduolingo-staff-security-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fduolingo-staff-security-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fduolingo-staff-security-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/duolingo-staff-security-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fduolingo-staff-security-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3994521}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"duolingo.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3994521},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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