Head of Ad Sales

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...

Join us to build Duolingo’s direct ad business.

Duolingo is used by over 110 million users every month to learn a language, music, or math. The vast majority of our learners engage with the free, ad-supported version of our app, which is core to our mission of delivering a learning experience that is accessible to all.

As our reach continues to grow, we want to elevate Duolingo’s free experience by introducing higher-quality ad formats that delight learners and offer substantial monetization potential for Duolingo.

We are seeking a Director of Ads to build our direct ad business from the ground up. As the founding member of our sales team, you will develop Duolingo’s ad strategy and lead our ad sales initiatives. You’ll collaborate closely with our Business, Monetization, Product, and Design teams to formulate strategies for innovative ad formats that excite advertisers while building on Duolingo’s tenets of gamification, delightful design, brand equity, and character IP.

This is a global role, reporting into our VP of Business Development, where you will work in a high-velocity environment to lay the foundation for a new business line for Duolingo, leveraging your extensive network to generate demand and drive value to Duolingo and our advertising partners. This position offers a unique, zero-to-one, opportunity to play a pivotal part in shaping the trajectory of ads on Duolingo for hundreds of millions of learners.

  You will...

• Develop Duolingo’s ads strategy, aligning with our mission, business objectives, and product guardrail to maintain a high-quality free user experience
• Define Duolingo’s “ad menu” and rate cards, identifying standard and native formats that drive value for our advertisers
• Drive revenue growth by generating demand within key verticals and maintaining a pipeline of new and existing advertising clients
• Advise on scaling our sales operations through low-resource models, such as commercial partners and/or automation-first sales motions
• Establish and implement efficient, repeatable sales strategies and operational processes, prioritizing accounts and managing key relationships effectively
• Monitor market trends and perform competitive analyses to inform strategic decisions and identify emerging opportunities
• Create compelling sales presentations and proposals using internal and external data
• Represent Duolingo at relevant industry events, showcasing our product and expanding our network

  You have...

• 10+ years of experience in direct ad sales, media buying, or digital advertising, preferably with a focus on innovative formats and delightful user experiences
• Experience building an ad business for a leading consumer mobile app from the ground up
• Proven track record in building a book of business of top tier advertisers
• Strong understanding of the ad tech ecosystem and experience onboarding necessary vendors (e.g. for measurement, reporting, automation)
• Strong understanding of the Duolingo product and experience working directly with product, engineers, and designers
• Expertise in using data to derive insights and assess the performance of ad campaigns
• Experience negotiating and structuring standard and innovative ad-buying agreements
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills
• Ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment
• Entrepreneurial attitude that favors starting things from scratch, reducing complexity, and quickly testing and reiterating on ideas and processes