Principal Design Engineer, Storytelling

Job Description

We’re looking for a Principal Design‑Engineer to join our Storytelling team – a specialized group that works across all product areas to ensure our experiences feel cohesive, high‑quality, and deeply valuable to customers. This is a hybrid role at the intersection of product design, front‑end engineering, and prototyping.

This role is focused on making ideas real faster and more accurately. You’ll define hypotheses from design explorations, translate them into interactive prototypes or code‑based artifacts, and help ensure what gets built matches both the intent and quality of the original design.

You’ll report directly to the Head of Design and collaborate closely across product, design, engineering, research, content, and data science. You will play a key role in extending our design system into implementation‑ready and agent‑ready structures, helping shape emerging AI workflows.

We are committed to a 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). We will continue to hire and promote beyond the boundaries of our office locations to enable broader diversity.

• Translate design explorations into clear hypotheses that can be tested, validated, and built.
• Build interactive, code‑based prototypes that bridge the gap between design intent and engineering implementation across web and native platforms.
• Partner closely with designers to refine interaction models into buildable directions for iOS, Android, and web experiences.
• Work with engineers across platform teams to ensure shipped experiences faithfully reflect intended design quality and behavior.
• Create lightweight, production‑adjacent implementations that reduce ambiguity across multi‑platform product areas.
• Contribute to and evolve design systems so they function seamlessly across design tools, code, and production environments.
• Develop steering documents and implementation frameworks that make design intent explicit, consistent, and buildable.
• Enable designers to work more directly in live code by creating shared foundations, tools, and reusable patterns across platforms.

• Experienced product designer with strong front‑end engineering or design‑engineering experience.
• Comfortable operating at a principal IC level, shaping direction while also building hands‑on prototypes and code.
• Strong ability to translate design intent into working software across web, iOS, and Android environments.
• Fluent in CSS. Familiar with modern front‑end technologies (e.g., React, Next.js, Tailwind) and native app constraints and patterns.
• Deep understanding of how design decisions translate into engineering implementation across multiple platforms.
• Proven ability to work across complex, multi‑surface products spanning web and native apps.
• Strong collaborator who can align design and engineering around shared interpretation of quality and intent.
• Passionate about craftsmanship in both design execution and production‑quality code.

Bonus:
Experience with consumer subscription products, digital ecosystems, or value communication within product experiences.

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 a workforce 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.

Ancestry values pay transparency and equity. As a signatory of the Parity Pledge in Support of Women and the Parity Pledge in Support of People of Color, we are pleased to share the base salary range for this position: $153,000 – $182,000 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…