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 an Engineering Manager, you will be responsible for building out the next phase of Substack’s vision. Product teams are responsible for development of features across iOS, Android, and web destinations. These destinations are central to the experience of using Substack, enabling new forms of online communities, discovery and engagement with the wider network of Substacks, and new forms of expression and creation for all users of Substack.
Responsibilities
- Lead a team that develops Substack apps for creators and their audiences.
- Engage in strategic product vision and direction-setting with your team, peers, and company leadership.
- Scale systems to handle ever-increasing load and a fast-growing ecosystem of writers and readers.
- Contribute to the whole product process in collaboration 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 deliver high-quality solutions.
- Work directly with customers to solve their problems. The entire company (CEO included) participates in customer support in order to drive empathy for our users and help us build better products.
- Partner with product and engineering leaders across the organization on team-wide initiatives and strategy.
- Collaborate with Substack’s recruiting team to hire and retain great engineers.
- We work with JavaScript, 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.
About You
- At least 3+ years of software engineering management experience.
- Passion for recruiting and building healthy, diverse teams.
- Experience in building social and/or media networks.
- Can contribute across the full web stack, but may have a deeper passion for certain technologies and systems.
- 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.
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 $225,000 to $265,000/year. 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.
Top Skills
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.
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