Performance Marketing Lead
About The Position
Duolingo is seeking a Performance Marketing Lead to own paid user growth across more than 100 markets and multiple products, including language, chess, and math. The role is accountable for efficiently acquiring high-quality new users and demonstrating the impact of marketing spend, while helping determine future investment priorities with the Performance Marketing leadership team. The lead will set paid acquisition strategy, manage and develop performance marketers, oversee campaigns across a range of global advertising platforms and markets, and use experimentation and user-quality measures to guide spending. The role works closely with agency and ad tech partners, Social, Brand, Country Marketing, Product, Engineering, and marketing leadership. Base salary is supplemented by equity compensation.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of experience in performance marketing or paid user acquisition, focused on large-scale global mobile acquisition campaigns.
- At least 3 years leading teams of performance marketers.
- Track record of owning a large, multichannel performance budget and taking channels from test to scale.
- Hands-on experience with incrementality tests, saturation analysis, and LTV and ROAS models.
- Deep knowledge of the mobile user acquisition ecosystem, including attribution technologies and iOS privacy frameworks such as SKAN.
- Experience partnering with Product and Engineering teams on performance marketing.
- Judgment to recommend cutting or reallocating spend when returns do not support it.
- Clear, concise written communication, from channel-level detail to leadership-level recommendations.
Nice To Haves
- Experience leading user acquisition for a top subscription-based mobile app or a high-engagement consumer app with millions of daily users.
- Experience running acquisition in China or other markets with distinct advertising ecosystems.
- Experience growing users across multiple products or apps.
- Experience scaling creative through UGC agencies, creator marketplaces, or creator networks.
- Passion for Duolingo’s mission to make education universally accessible.
Responsibilities
- Own paid user growth goals and set strategy for acquiring new users who remain engaged and learn.
- Lead and develop a team of performance marketers, establishing expectations for craft, rigor, and ownership.
- Run user acquisition across Google UAC, Meta, TikTok, AppLovin, programmatic partners, and channels in China; decide when to scale, maintain, or reduce investment as efficiency changes.
- Measure the impact of user-growth spending using incrementality testing, saturation analysis, and new-user quality metrics such as retention.
- Build creative testing at scale with agency, creator, user-generated content, and in-house partners, and use results to guide future creative.
- Manage agency and ad tech partners and hold them accountable for goals, pacing, and execution quality.
- Adjust spending around the organic calendar in partnership with Social, Brand, and Country Marketing for launches, seasonal changes, and viral moments.
- Partner with Product and Engineering on measurement infrastructure, paid-user onboarding, and experiments connecting acquisition to retention.
- Provide marketing leadership with clear performance recommendations, including assessments of what is not working.
Benefits
- Equity compensation in addition to base salary
- Employee well-being benefits are referenced, but specific benefits are not listed in the posting.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
