Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.
We're looking for a Regional People Lead to serve as both a senior People Business Partner and the operational owner for our growing EMEA presence.
Strategic Partnership
- Serve as the senior People Partner to EMEA leaders, building deep business understanding and advising on org design, performance, team health, and growth.
- Lead engagement, inclusion, and talent planning initiatives across the region, and drive talent density in partnership with TA.
- Guide leaders and teams through organizational change, translating global OKRs and TMR programs into plans that fit regional context and surfacing gaps back to TMR.
- Own complex employee relations and higher-risk people matters across the region, including investigations, grievances, performance and disciplinary processes, and settlement agreements, applying employment-law judgment and knowing when to bring in Legal or the central team.
- Use people data and engagement insight to spot organizational health trends early and recommend action.
Regional Operations & Compliance
- Own regional People operations end to end, leading a People Operations Manager who delivers day-to-day execution across direct entities and PEO-supported markets, while staying close enough to the detail to catch compliance and payroll risk yourself.
- Own the regional PEO/EOR relationship, including monthly payroll submissions across multiple calendars, employment changes, terminations, new-country implementation, and vendor management across PEO-supported markets.
- Act as the regional authority on employment compliance across direct and PEO markets, including UK Right to Work, UK and German contract and employment-law requirements, and country-specific PEO frameworks; ensure local legal review where required.
- Serve as the regional execution layer for centrally-owned systems, validating data against source documents and ensuring global processes function correctly in local practice.
- Serve as regional liaison to Finance on budgets, vendor contracts, expense management, and reporting, maintaining strong internal controls and documentation.
- Identify repetitive regional processes and improve them through better workflow and automation where appropriate, reducing cross-time-zone friction without compromising local compliance judgment.
Recruiting & Workplace Experience
- Partner with Talent Acquisition on regional hiring strategy, offer decisions, and locally relevant onboarding.
- Partner with London workplace operations on facilities, safety, and vendor management, and lead regional events and programming.
- Ensure a strong employee experience across hybrid and remote environments regionwide, providing a consistent point of contact through the employee lifecycle.
Global Representation
- Represent EMEA in global People forums and planning cycles, ensuring regional voice shapes global policy rather than just receiving it.
- Bring clarity and consistent ownership to how global People processes land locally.
Requirements
- Experience in HR, People Business Partnering, or regional People operations, including work supporting multi-country teams across EMEA.
- Hands-on experience managing employees through a PEO or EOR provider across multiple EMEA markets.
- Strong knowledge of European employment practices, labor law, and compliance across multiple jurisdictions, including the UK and Germany.
- Demonstrated ability to move seamlessly between strategic advising and hands-on operational execution.
- Experience scaling People operations and processes in a fast-growing, distributed environment.
- Sound judgment owning complex employee relations and higher-risk people matters, grounded in employment law.
- A collaborative partner to Finance on budgets, vendor management, and reporting.
- Strong cross-cultural communication and the judgment to know when to escalate, when to decide, and when to bring the global team in.
- Fluency across core People and HRIS systems, with the rigor to keep data accurate between global platforms and local source documents.
