Remote job
Regional People Lead, EMEA
Duolingo
Job description
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 …
This role is provided by an external source. Applications are handled on the source website.
