Full Job Description
We’re looking for a Lead Product Designer to join our Preserve & Share team — a group dedicated to helping people save, celebrate, and share the moments and discoveries that matter most. This team is focused on family memory preservation and creating experiences that make it easy and rewarding for people to connect with loved ones, both within and beyond Ancestry.
This role will spearhead the company's strategy around 'Share,' the third pillar of our mission, aiming to help our users connect with family and friends over the discoveries they've made and preserved on Ancestry. You will own the long-term vision for the future of sharing, iterating on existing features while championing net-new strategies and capabilities to bring the value of 'sharing' to life. You’ll define experiences that transform discoveries into moments of profound connection, making family history more engaging and enduring—ultimately bringing families closer together.
You’ll report to the Design Director of the Preserve & Share team and collaborate closely with peers across product, design, engineering, research, content, and marketing. Together, you’ll create experiences that encourage people to preserve their stories and share them in ways that feel personal, meaningful, and delightful.
Ancestry serves millions of customers globally. Your work will help strengthen the emotional connections at the heart of family history and create experiences that inspire people to share their stories across generations.
What you’ll do
• Lead design initiatives from start to finish, driving consistency, quality, and cohesion.
• Shape product strategy alongside product managers and engineers, identifying opportunities to increase engagement and create moments of connection.
• Translate customer needs, qualitative insights, and quantitative data into intuitive and emotionally resonant experiences.
• Partner closely with research and customer insights teams, including direct engagement with customers, to inform design decisions that build trust and clarity.
• Bring a systems-thinking approach to design, helping connect individual features into a broader, unified experience.
• Create high-quality flows, prototypes, and polished interactions that bring ideas to life and inspire teams.
• Partner across teams to ensure experiences feel cohesive and aligned with broader customer journeys.
• Advocate for the customer across the organization, fostering a culture of clarity, empathy, and intentional design.
• Raise the quality bar through thoughtful critique, collaboration, and mentorship of other designers.
Who you are
• Significant experience designing delightful consumer products, with a track record of delivering experiences that drive engagement and create customer value.
• Comfortable operating as a lead individual contributor — setting direction while remaining deeply hands-on in the work.
• Strong systems thinker who can connect customer needs with business goals and product strategy.
• Exceptional interaction and visual design skills, with a portfolio demonstrating craft and attention to detail.
• Skilled at turning complexity into simple, intuitive experiences.
• Strong storyteller and communicator, able to align stakeholders around a shared vision and influence decisions across disciplines.
• Passionate about designing products that create emotional connections and bring people closer together.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and exploring new opportunities through experimentation and iteration.
• Experience partnering closely with product managers, engineers, researchers, and cross-functional teams.
Bonus: Experience with consumer subscription products, social experiences, storytelling products, creator tools, or products centered around memories, identity, and connection.
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).