Engineering Manager

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. 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 leadership. 

• Scale systems to handle an 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, Typescript, 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 4+ 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 $230,000 to $275,000/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.

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