Substack is building a new economic engine for culture, giving the brightest, most interesting, and most creative people on the internet the power of their own publishing platform. The terms of our culture should not be set by gate-keeping legacy media or chaos-fueling social media, but by the people who actually make and participate in that culture. Substack’s model, based on direct subscriptions, has fueled an explosion of independent publishing. It empowers creators with economic autonomy, creative ownership, and a direct connection to their most engaged audiences.
About the Community Team
We’re working on the next frontier of products and features to help Substack creators connect and manage their community. This ranges from DMs to Substack Chat to entirely new products.
Our team brainstorms with the CEO, Chris Best, and each engineer contributes ideas for new products and UI/UX upgrades to existing products. Ultimately those ideas become internal prototypes, and then become products shipped to our millions of users.
We’re a small team of generalists, so we especially value an interest in working across our tech stack, willingness to prototype, and product-mindedness.
Responsibilities:
Build frontend and backend (and sometimes mobile) features that help creators manage their communities, and users connect more deeply within these communities.
Collaborate with designers, writers, support staff, and many others. From product concept and research to implementation and deployment, we expect you to own your work and operate autonomously.
We work with TypeScript, especially Node/Express and React, and Postgres. It’s helpful if you know these technologies already; if not, we’ll be excited to help you learn.
Requirements:
At least 7+ years of software engineering experience.
Independent and autonomous. We’re too small to micromanage, and expect that every person at the company owns their work and can be a leader.
Hold yourself and others to a high standard when working on production systems.
Take pride in building elegant and delightful product experiences. Substack works best when it gets out of the way so writers can focus on writing and connecting with their readers.
Enjoy collaboration with a diverse group of thinkers while bringing our own unique experience and background to the team.
Believe in Substack’s mission to build a better business model for writing.
Experience working with ML technology would be beneficial.
Experience at a fast-growing startup or working on a high-performing growth team is not required, but is a plus.
Substack's compensation package includes a market competitive salary, equity for all full time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation salary range for this role is $140,000 - $260,000. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Substack is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or transgender status), age, national origin, veteran or disability status. We’re seeking people passionate about enabling independent expression and building a better business model for creators. If you want to see what media, communities, and content can become when unmoored from advertising models, and you have the skills and experience to contribute, we’d love to meet you.
Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here.
Skills Required
- At least 7+ years of software engineering experience.
- Independent and autonomous; able to own work and act as a leader.
- Hold yourself and others to high standards when working on production systems.
- Take pride in building elegant and delightful product experiences.
- Enjoy collaboration with designers, writers, support staff, and diverse teams.
- Believe in Substack's mission to build a better business model for writing.
- Experience with TypeScript, Node/Express, React, and Postgres (helpful).
- Experience working with machine learning technology (beneficial).
- Experience at a fast-growing startup or high-performing growth team (plus).
What We Do
Substack lets writers connect with their audience on their own terms and earn money doing it. We make it simple for writers to publish to an email list that they own, get discovered on the web, and charge for subscriptions. More than 500,000 people pay to subscribe to writers across the Substack network, and the top writers make millions of dollars a year. Substack’s model depends on the success of writers using Substack – we only make money when they do. “Substack makes it dead simple to start a newsletter and get paid for it.” – Judd Legum, author of Popular Information "Substack gives me a way to connect with my audience on my own terms.” – Lyz Lenz, author of God Land and Men Yell At Me Make something that matters Great writing is valuable. It respects readers' time, their intelligence, and their trust. It helps us make sense of and change the culture we live in. At Substack, we're building a business model that enables great writing to thrive. Learn more about our opportunity and mission. We are a small but growing team, and there is more to build than we could ever imagine. That’s why we need you. We aim to take pragmatic approaches to problem solving while shipping high-quality products that allow the writing on Substack to take the spotlight. Every person at the company participates in customer support. We do this to build empathy with our users and enable us to build better products. We believe that a diverse team will help us build a product that best serves the needs of a wildly diverse ecosystem of writers. So whatever your background or perspective, we’d welcome your input to help build the best possible version of Substack.
