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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.
- Own the 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.
- 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 (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!
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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 [email protected].
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.
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