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 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.
As a member of Substack’s Activation team, you will be responsible for building and testing features that bring new readers and creators to Substack and help them succeed and stick around. The team's goal is to help consumers find things they love, and to help creators find an audience and make a living. Engineers work in close partnership with designers, product thinkers, and our users to make it easier and more efficient for Substack’s discovery engines to run.
Responsibilities
Develop features that help writers make more money on Substack
Design and run experiments to improve sign-up conversion, first-action completion, and D1 / D7 retention, with particular attention to users arriving from different surfaces (organic search, App Store browse, creator-shared links, paid campaigns)
Build tools and features to help new creators find an audience and build a publishing habit
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 3+ 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 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 3 years of software engineering experience
- Ability to work independently and autonomously
- High standards when working on production systems
- Interest in building elegant and delightful product experiences
- Ability to collaborate with a diverse group of thinkers
- Experience at a fast-growing startup or high-performing growth team
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.
