Lead Product Designer

About Ancestry:

When you join Ancestry, you join a human-centered company where every person’s story is important. Ancestry®, the global leader in family history, connects everyone with their past so they can discover, preserve, and share their unique family stories. With our unparalleled collection of more than 65 billion records, over 3.5 million subscribers, and over 27 million people in our growing DNA network, customers can discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. Over the past 40 years, we’ve built trusted relationships with millions of people who have chosen us as the platform for discovering, preserving, and sharing the most important information about themselves and their families.
We are committed to our location flexible work approach, allowing you to choose to work in the nearest office, from your home, or a hybrid of both (subject to location restrictions and roles that are required to be in the office- see the full list of eligible US locations HERE). We will continue to hire and promote beyond the boundaries of our office locations, to enable broadened possibilities for employee diversity.
Together, we work every day to foster a work environment that's inclusive as well as diverse, and where our people can be themselves. Every idea and perspective is valued so that our products and services reflect the global and diverse clients we serve. 
Ancestry encourages applications from minorities, women, the disabled, protected veterans and all other qualified applicants. Passionate about dedicating your work to enriching people’s lives? Join the curious.

We are looking for a Lead Product Designer to join our growing design organization through this centralized talent pool. In this role, you will be placed into one of our high-impact core teams (Vision/Systems, Engage, or Preserve & Share), depending on your unique strengths and business needs.

Whether you are defining the foundational design systems that scale across our global product ecosystem, merging genetic genealogy with rich storytelling workflows, or spearheading our long-term strategy for multi-generational sharing, your work will help unify a complex ecosystem into a seamless, trustworthy, and deeply emotional experience.

This is a remote-friendly role reporting to a Design Director or the Head of Design, offering a flexible culture focused on work/life balance and cross-functional collaboration.

What You'll Do

• Drive Experience Strategy: Partner closely with product management, engineering, data science, and research to shape early thinking, establish long-term visions, and influence product direction through systems thinking.

• Design Across the Ecosystem: Translate complex data, scientific insights, and fragmented features into simple, approachable, and emotionally resonant user experiences.

• Evolve Design Foundations: Bring structure to ambiguity by defining core interaction patterns, frameworks, and reusable design components that ensure consistency across all product surfaces.

• Connect with Customers: Partner directly with user research teams and engage with members firsthand to ground design and systems decisions in real user behaviors and data insights.

• Deliver High-Craft Outputs: Create foundational flows, architecture frameworks, interactive prototypes, and polished visual designs that bring ideas to life and inspire cross-functional teams.

• Enable and Mentor: Raise the organizational quality bar through thoughtful critique, collaborative workshops, and the mentorship of other product designers.

Who You Are

• Experienced Practitioner: Significant experience in product, systems, or platform design within complex, direct-to-consumer digital products.

• Lead Individual Contributor: Comfortable setting strategic direction and aligning stakeholders while remaining deeply hands-on in execution and design craft.

• Master Systems Thinker: Proven ability to connect customer needs with business goals, map individual features into a broader unified experience, and build scalable frameworks.

• Exceptional Craftsperson: A portfolio demonstrating top-tier interaction design, visual polish, attention to detail, and a knack for turning complexity into intuitive simplicity.

• Strong Communicator & Facilitator: An excellent storyteller who can align diverse, multi-team groups around shared principles, user advocacy, and product decisions.

• Adaptable & Pragmatic: Comfortable operating within ambiguity and competing priorities, with a knack for balancing ideal design states with iterative, speed-to-market solutions.

Bonus Points

• Experience with consumer subscription models, social platforms, creator tools, or data-rich, AI-powered environments.

• Background or familiarity with evidence-based domains like genealogy, DNA, health, science, search algorithms, or digital memory preservation.

Why Ancestry?

Join a dedicated team working to connect millions of people with their past and enrich their futures. At Ancestry, you will play a role in pioneering legal solutions that shape the consumer genomics industry. Your contributions will help foster and protect our workforce that is dedicated to helping our customers tell their own stories, while supporting a brand recognized and trusted around the world. We offer a collaborative workplace, competitive compensation, and the opportunity to make a meaningful difference.

Compensation

Ancestry values pay transparency and equity. As a signatory of the ParityPledge in Support of Women and the ParityPledge in Support of People of Color, we are pleased to share the base salary range for this position: $130,000 - $150,000 with eligibility for bonus, equity, and comprehensive benefits including health, dental, and vision. Actual salary will depend on location and experience. We will provide detailed compensation data for a specific location during the recruiting process.

*Note: Disclosure as required by sb19-085(8-5-20) and sb1162(1-1-23).

Additional Information:

Ancestry is an Equal Opportunity Employer that makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition, military or veteran status, citizenship, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. In addition, Ancestry will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.

All job offers are contingent on a background check screen that complies with applicable law. For candidates who live in San Francisco, CA, pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Ancestry will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Ancestry is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at Ancestry via-email, the Internet or in any form and/or method without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of Ancestry. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Ancestry as a result of the referral or through other means.