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. Substack empowers independent writers, artists, videographers, podcasters, and creators of all types to create, share, and make a living off their work through subscriptions, while offering them creative freedom, ownership, and a direct connection to their audiences.
Brand Partnerships at Substack
We're building Substack's sponsorships business from the ground up. The Implementation Lead makes campaigns scale into a marketplace. You own the operational backbone of the business: campaign workflows, integrations/operations, and marketplace quality that makes it all happen. When a brand’s ad ops team and solutions engineers need to understand each other, you're the translator. This is a founding role on a small team and a build role.
Responsibilities
Own trafficking, QA, launch, delivery monitoring for custom sponsorship formats
Execute on the pipes for the business: order management, campaign workflows, reporting, and billing handoffs
Implement and maintain the integrations brands expect — tracking, third-party measurement, verification — adapted to formats that standard tags and pixels weren't built for
Serve as first-line solutions lead for brands and agencies operating in the marketplace, and be the translator when their ad ops team needs to understand how our formats actually work
Work with design and engineering to decide what deserves real tooling now versus what stays a manual workaround until there's volume to justify automating it
Contribute to an AI-first outbound and onboarding engine to drive demand into the marketplace
Write the playbooks and documentation — since for custom formats, the playbook usually doesn't exist until you write it
About You
10+ years in ad operations, solutions engineering, or technical account management at a platform, publisher, or ad tech company
Hands-on experience with campaign trafficking, tag management, and third-party measurement or verification vendors — and comfort when the format doesn't fit the vendor's assumptions
Fluency with data: strong spreadsheet skills at minimum, SQL and scripting a real advantage, and the judgment to know when a number looks wrong
Experience sitting in on sales calls to answer technical questions and scope feasibility on custom or unfamiliar formats in real time
The range to debug a delivery discrepancy with an agency in the morning and spec an internal tool with an engineer in the afternoon
An operator's instinct for process: you build systems that scale without over-engineering before there's volume to justify it
Familiarity with how creator sponsorships are sold, delivered, and measured is a plus
Experience with APIs, workflow automation, or light scripting (Python, JavaScript) 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 $250,000 - $300,000. Multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, determine final offer amounts 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
- 10+ years of experience in ad operations, solutions engineering, or technical account management at a platform, publisher, or ad tech company
- Hands-on experience with campaign trafficking, tag management, and third-party measurement or verification vendors
- Strong spreadsheet skills and fluency with data
- Experience answering technical questions and assessing feasibility for custom or unfamiliar formats during sales calls
- Ability to debug delivery discrepancies with agencies and specify internal tools with engineers
- Process-oriented approach to building scalable systems without premature over-engineering
- Familiarity with how creator sponsorships are sold, delivered, and measured
- Experience with APIs, workflow automation, or light scripting in Python or JavaScript
- SQL experience
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.
