Associate Director, Product Design
Who we are
Join Embark on our mission to bring joy to dog lovers by offering the world’s best products and services to strengthen their bonds with the dogs in their lives. Our canine DNA test — named the best by The New York Times — enables us to make scientific advances in personalized pet care.
Designed by world leaders in dog genetics (in partnership with Cornell University), the Embark Dog DNA Test provides information on genetic health risks and breed make-up, allowing dog owners, breeders, and veterinarians to drive personalized care plans based on a dog's unique genetic profile.
Join our pack! At Embark, our People First culture is centered around building an amazing team and giving everyone an opportunity to have a voice and make an impact. We are looking for highly motivated and mission-driven employees who will join us as Embark leads the cutting edge of creativity and innovation in the fast-growing consumer genetics space.
About the role
We are looking for an Associate Director, Design to drive strategy, execution, and leadership as both a player and coach. You’ll shape how design empowers pet parents to turn genetic insights into everyday actions, while fostering community and long-term engagement.
This role requires strong strategic thinking, creative facilitation, and the ability to synthesize complex research into clear product direction. You’ll guide our design team, influence cross-company initiatives, and champion partnerships with brand, marketing, and e-commerce to oversee our design system and product ecosystem.
What you’ll do
Strategic discovery, research & facilitation
Define and champion Embark's design strategy for personalized pet care experiences by
- Leading strategic discovery and user research to understand pain points and validate opportunities.
- Facilitating cross-functional workshops to align Product, Science, Marketing, and Engineering around user-centered solutions
- Synthesizing research findings, user feedback, and scientific insights into actionable product opportunities that drive behavioral change, engagement and community.
Systems Thinking & Design Governance
- Govern the design system across product, marketing, and brand touchpoints
- Ensure cohesive user experience, brand cohesion and design quality across our product portfolio, app and web surfaces
Hands-On Design & Execution
- Act as a player-coach: contributing hands-on design work while mentoring and guiding your team.
- Design and prototype AI/LLM-powered experiences, crafting a variety of UIs and interaction patterns to deliver adaptive interfaces and journeys that encourage the behaviors and habits we aim to inspire.
- Work closely with Product Management and Engineering to translate designs into scalable, performant implementations and manage tradeoffs (latency, caching, data loading)
Collaboration & Leadership
- Partner with Product and Engineering to track key outcomes (activation, engagement, retention) and iteratively refine solutions
- Connect insights to product roadmap decisions and business outcomes through ongoing leadership collaboration
- Mentor, coach, and grow design talent—setting a culture of curiosity, craft excellence, and collaboration.
- Build trusted partnerships with leaders across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Science to ensure alignment of design with business and customer outcomes.
Experience we’re looking for
Core Competencies
- Strong strategic thinking: Ability to lead discovery, synthesize complex information, and facilitate alignment around product direction
- Systems thinking: Can work across multiple touchpoints and teams to create cohesive experiences. Understands how design decisions in one area impact the broader customer journey and product ecosystem.
- Design Craft: Solid skills across UX strategy, research, interaction, and visual design
- Technical literacy: Can collaborate effectively with engineering and understand implementation constraints
Core Experience
- 7 years of professional design experience, with a minimum of 2 years in a leadership role
- Track record of leading strategic discovery and facilitating collaborative problem-solving with cross-functional teams
- A portfolio demonstrating the ability to design and ship engaging consumer experiences that deliver measurable behavioral impact
- Experience in growth-focused product design and leading habit-forming product strategies
- Strong communication skills, able to present design solutions and inspire confidence among executives and non-design stakeholders.
- Experience hiring, structuring, or scaling a design team
- Familiarity with freemium or trial-to-paid monetization models and balancing engagement vs. premium value.
- Demonstrated capacity to quickly learn and design for emerging technologies, such as AI/LLM, with a focus on translating complexity into simple, behaviorally impactful experiences
Nice-to-Haves
- Health, wellness, or science-based consumer product experience
- DTC subscription, e-commerce, or freemium SaaS background
- Prior startup experience.
Why join the pack!
At Embark, we might be dog lovers, but we’re passionate about people too. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where all employees can thrive. Here are some of our benefits and perks:
- Flexible vacation policy – take the time you need, when you need it.
- Paid parental leave – plus paw-ternity leave for new pet parents!
- Every other Friday off in the summer – enjoy those long weekends.
- Subsidized pet insurance – because our pets are family.
- Big-company benefits with a startup feel – including a 401k match, semi-annual bonus, commuter benefits, and premium healthcare.
- Competitive salaries and stock options – be an owner in what we’re building.
- New MacBook Pros or Windows devices – the tools you need to succeed.
- Continuing education support – conferences, learning resources, and career growth opportunities.
Salary: $180,000 - $210,000 depending on experience and qualifications
Embark is an equal opportunity workplace and values diversity at our company. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, age, disability status, marital status, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by federal, state or local laws. See also EEO is the Law.