Regional People Lead, EMEA
About the role
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...
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. Based in London, you'll bridge global strategy and local execution: delivering sharp counsel to regional leaders while keeping compliance, operations, and the employee experience running seamlessly.
Navigating a mix of direct entities and PEO-supported markets, you're as comfortable handling multi-country compliance as you are advising leaders. Reporting to the Head of Talent Management and Rewards (TMR), you will lead and develop a People Operations Manager, champion the EMEA region in global planning, and ensure local nuance actively shapes our global strategy.
🧠 You will...
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.
- Work alongside the wider People team on our regional PEO/EOR relationship (currently Globalization Partners), including monthly payroll submissions across multiple calendars, employment changes, terminations, new-country implementation, and vendor management across PEO-supported markets.
- Support 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, ensuring requirements are met in local practice and escalating for legal review as needed.
- Serve as the regional execution layer for centrally-owned systems (such as Workday), 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.
✅ You have...
- 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 (e.g. Globalization Partners) 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.
The 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!
Salary Range: £124,395—£186,592 GBPBenefits: Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.
Job Alerts: Sign up for job alerts here.
Accommodations: 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 accommodations@duolingo.com.
Equal 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.
Fraud 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.
By applying for this position your data will be processed as per the Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice.
