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 Payments Team
Subscription payments are the heart of Substack’s product and business model. Everything we do is based on the idea that creators can and should be paid directly by their audience, instead of relying on attention capture and advertising. And we believe that creators themselves should own these payment relationships, without being tied to any platform, including ours.
We are a small team with outsized impact and ownership. We take on both the traditional payments engineering : integrating with payment processors, managing the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription revenue, and also the full stack feature development that drives those payments. This means a wide variety of projects, including building brand new payout systems, A/B testing the subscribe flow, and shipping features like gift subscriptions.
Responsibilities
Develop the core payment surfaces and backend systems on Substack.
Own your work and deliver high-quality solutions from product concept and proposal to implementation, experimentation, and measurement.
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.
We also work with payment processors, including Stripe. Again, experience here is beneficial but not required.
Requirements
3+ years of software engineering experience, including building and shipping web applications.
Independent and autonomous. Strong product sense and intuition.
Passionate about building a better business model for the internet.
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
- 3+ years of software engineering experience
- Experience building and shipping web applications
- Independence and autonomy
- Strong product sense and intuition
- Passion for enabling independent expression and building a better internet business model
- Experience with TypeScript, Node/Express, React, and PostgreSQL
- Experience working with payment processors, including Stripe
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.
