VP of Finance

Duolingo Duolingo · Consumer · New York, NY · Financial Planning & Analysis

VP of Finance role at Duolingo, responsible for Financial Planning & Analysis and Strategic Finance. The role involves co-owning the financial operating cadence, partnering with senior leadership and investors, establishing financial principles, defining KPIs, leading a finance team, and driving finance modernization through AI, data science, and automation.

What you'd actually do

  1. Co-own Duolingo’s financial operating cadence, including annual planning, long-range planning, forecasting, and company-wide business reviews.
  2. Partner closely with the CFO, Board of Directors, and senior leadership to provide rigorous financial insight that shapes company-wide strategy and resource allocation.
  3. Establish and uphold rigorous financial principles across the company, ensuring teams make decisions grounded in strong unit economics and long-term value creation.
  4. Serve as a key voice in communicating Duolingo’s financial performance and long-term strategy to the Board and investors, partnering closely with Investor Relations on earnings materials, guidance, and external messaging.
  5. Define and refine the KPIs that drive operating discipline, ensuring alignment between financial performance, product strategy, and long-term mission impact.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business, or a related field.
  • 15+ years of progressive finance experience in FP&A, Investment Banking, Corporate or Strategic Finance, including 5+ years leading and managing teams, ideally within a consumer technology, SaaS, subscription or marketplace business.
  • Deep expertise in financial modeling, long-range planning, and capital allocation — including familiarity with data science and quantitative methods — with the ability to translate complex data into clear strategic insight.
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex financial topics into clear, compelling narratives for executives, the Board, and investors.
  • A strategic and business-minded perspective, capable of balancing financial rigor with bold, long-term thinking.
  • A low-ego, high-EQ leadership style that builds trust across functions, earns credibility through impact, and operates both at strategic altitude and in the details.

Nice to have

  • MBA or advanced degree in finance or a related field.
  • Experience in a global publicly-traded company, with exposure to earnings preparation and investor relations, and with increasing levels of executive responsibility.
  • Deep understanding of subscription economics, consumer product metrics, and global business models.
  • Experience enabling Finance departments through AI, data science and advanced analytics, or automation.

What the JD emphasized

  • AI integration
  • data science
  • automation
  • financial integrity
  • long-term value creation
  • quantitative and statistical methods
  • financial modeling
  • long-range planning
  • capital allocation
  • data science and quantitative methods