Director of Product Design, Engage

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.

This role is a rare opportunity to lead design for the heart of Ancestry’s product—the Tree, the Person Page, Merge, and Records—foundational experiences that define how millions of users engage with their family history. As Director of Product Design on the Engage team, you’ll be at the center of our most critical product surfaces, ensuring they work seamlessly together to deliver clarity, connection, and discovery.

This is not just about optimizing what already exists; it’s about reimagining how these core experiences evolve as a unified ecosystem. It requires a design leader with a strong product sensibility, a systems-thinking mindset, and the ability to balance craft with scale. You’ll need to advocate across disciplines, align with senior stakeholders, and guide a team through complexity and legacy to deliver elegant, human-centered solutions.

For someone who wants to shape the future of our flagship experience—and the legacy of the Ancestry brand—this is that moment.

• Lead the design vision and execution for the Research team, ensuring cohesion and delight across the full customer journey.
• Partner across product areas and functions to eliminate friction, fill gaps, and ensure customers experience Ancestry as a rich, connected, and purpose-driven platform.
• Identify and prioritize key moments in the user journey that drive trust, retention, and discovery — and improve them through thoughtful product design and iteration.
• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, data, marketing, and customer support to ensure every touchpoint is aligned and intentional.
• Translate insights from qualitative research and quantitative data into actionable design direction, balancing creativity and clarity.
• Evangelize the customer journey internally — bringing a user-first lens to cross-org decision making and fostering a culture of customer empathy.
• Guide the creation of key design artifacts, including user flows, prototypes, wireframes, and visual systems.
• Coach and mentor a team of talented designers, helping them collaborate and grow as strategic thinkers and empathic customer advocates.