Sr. Director, Information Security

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.

Ancestry protects the highly sensitive family histories, DNA data, and personal records of millions of global customers. We are seeking a Sr. Director, Deputy CISO to serve as a key executive partner to our CISO and drive the enterprise-wide execution of our cyber risk strategy.

In this role, you will lead our security organization, align security operations with core business objectives, and act as a trusted risk advisor to senior leadership. You will champion a culture of default automation, metrics-driven governance, and resilience, ensuring Ancestry remains at the forefront of consumer trust and consumer-scale defense.

As a core member of the InfoSec leadership team, you will:

• Lead Enterprise Security Operations & Resilience: Oversee continuous security operations, incident response readiness, and threat intelligence. Serve as the primary Incident Commander during high-stakes events, orchestrating response across Legal, PR, Engineering, and Executive leadership.
• Enable Business & Product Innovation: Work cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Legal, Privacy, and IT to embed enterprise risk frameworks and security-by-design principles into consumer applications, AI/ML pipelines, and data architectures.
• Build & Scale High-Performing Teams: Lead, coach, and scale a multi-tiered organization of security directors, managers, and engineers, fostering accountability, clear succession paths, and operational excellence.
• Modernize Defense Capabilities: Drive continuous modernization across our security stack—leveraging AI/ML, automation, and cloud-native architectures to eliminate friction, reduce operational toil, and stay ahead of evolving threat vectors.

Executive Career Growth

• CISO Readiness: Serve as the primary delegate for the CISO, carrying enterprise-level accountability and gaining direct exposure to executive committees, board dynamics, and ownership groups.
• Comprehensive Enterprise Scope: Exercise end-to-end operational authority across Security Engineering, Incident Response, Cloud Security, Identity & Access Management (IAM), and Risk Management.
• High-Visibility Strategic Leadership: Translate complex security paradigms into quantifiable business risk metrics that directly inform enterprise-wide strategy and customer trust.

This Role Requires

• Experience: 10+ years of progressive leadership in information security, with a proven track record of managing multi-disciplinary security functions through subordinate managers/directors.
• Scale & Domain Expertise: Extensive experience driving security strategy within cloud-native (AWS/GCP/Azure), high-scale, consumer-facing technology organizations managing sensitive or regulated data.
• Incident Command & Crisis Leadership: Demonstrated authority commanding enterprise-level critical incidents, orchestrating legal, regulatory, and executive alignment under high pressure.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Proven capability to negotiate SLAs, drive vulnerability remediation, and align risk management priorities across engineering teams without direct line authority.
• Metrics & Risk Reporting: Proven track record of designing executive-level Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to drive resource prioritization and capital investment.
• Regulatory & Privacy Alignment: Deep understanding of global privacy, security, and compliance frameworks relevant to sensitive consumer and biometric data.

Bonus Characteristics for Success

• Strategic Business Alignment: Ability to position security as a business enabler that builds customer trust and accelerates product development.
• Applied AI & Emerging Tech Vision: Strategic oversight of AI-driven threat detection, securing Machine Learning pipelines, and governing safe enterprise LLM adoption.
• Operational Maturity: Exceptional discipline in business planning, quarterly strategic reviews, headcount planning, and roadmap execution.
• Automation-First Instinct: Commitment to enterprise automation, architectural scalability, and continuous process optimization.

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: $220,000 - $250,000, 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.