Product Designer, Substack
$150-215k
+ Equity
Platform for writers & podcasters
Job no longer available
Platform for writers & podcasters
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$150-215k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To give thinkers, writers, and creatives the opportunity to pursue their curiosity and make money at the same time.
Role
Who you are
- All product design applications must link to or include a portfolio. This portfolio needn't be overly polished, although excellently presented work might stand out; our focus will above all be on whether you've demonstrated the capacity to craft design solutions in relevant or related product areas
- 2 years of experience designing software; we're especially keen to see experience with social networks; content networks; or content systems or products of various kinds; but any experience building software interfaces applies (note: if you do not have this experience but believe you can hit the ground running, shipping high quality software immediately, feel free to apply)
- High degree of competence with Figma
- High tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Substack is still becoming a company, and much remains up for debate; everything from cycle plans to organizational structure to top-line strategy can change —and will— so a certain degree of adventurousness or heartiness is required, as it can all get rather messy!
- Interest in both independence and collaboration. Sometimes, we must be team players; at other times, we must strike out to explore and find new areas of opportunity. You should be at least comfortable with both modes of operation
Desirable
- Technical abilities. While it’s not a requirement, we’ll be very excited to see candidates who can code. Specifically, we highly value strong front-end skills, experience making and deploying sites end to end, and experience with TypeScript and React. We’re also of course very keen on candidates with SwiftUI capabilities. Current product designers with these skills use them often and to great effect, but we also appreciate that technical designers are “into software” as a whole
- SF Bay Area based. Living near our San Francisco HQ means being able to work directly with the CEO and others in-office, so it’s preferred. But most of us —including our Head of Design— are fully remote, and remote candidates shouldn’t feel discouraged from applying
What the job involves
- Rapidly build context about disparate product areas, community dynamics, and industry norms in any domains, from print media to podcasting to online social systems
- Identify high-leverage opportunities for your team and help make their pursuit practicable through rigorous path-conception, batch-sizing, staging, and go to market planning
- Design beautiful, usable, scalable interfaces and flows for a wide range of product zones (from profiles to CRM / analytics, publication aesthetics to moderation systems, email layouts to interactive content actions, and so much more)
- Think holistically about the second-order effects on Substack as a product system; balance user groups, weigh trade-offs, and pragmatically find solutions which achieve the best outcomes possible given various constraints
- Find ways to help creators and audiences build long-lasting, rewarding, and healthy relationships; empower audience members to become contributors and creators
- Help diversify the kinds of creators Substack supports, through novel media type support, alternative reader experiences, supporting outreach programs, and more
- Shape the culture and processes of Design at Substack
Our take
Substack is an online platform for journalists and writers to manage subscription-based newsletters. Substack has attracted a range of writers and publishers who wish to connect with their audiences while being removed from social media and other ad-based models.
For an industry that has seen a steady decline in its fortunes since the rise of digital, Substack offers journalism an alternative to the advertising-driven clickbait-focused model that has dominated the last decade. Substack has amassed more than 35 million subscribers.
The subscription newsletter space is a competitive market, but Substack claims to provide greater freedom to writers than its competitors. Writers produce their newsletters on the site for free, charging an optional subscription fee (minimum of $5/month) of which Substack takes 10%. The company continues to seek out ways to diversify its offerings, whilst securing funding rounds to expand its reach.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
62% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jul 2025
$100m
SERIES C
Nov 2024
$10m
ANGEL
Total funding: $200.3m
Company benefits
- Remote work support - All employees receive a generous allowance to customize their home offices
- Comprehensive health care - Substack covers 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents, and fully funds HRA plans
- Parental leave - We want employees to be fully present for the new members of their family, so we offer generous parental leave
- Flexible vacation and paid time off - You’re the best person to decide when you need a day—or a week—off to travel or decompress. Our flexible vacation policy puts you in control
- Company holidays and Winter shutdown - In addition to flexible time off, we honor 12 paid holidays annually on average. And we close the office between Christmas Eve and New Year's day to recharge each year
- Phone & internet stipends - Many of our employees work from home or on the go. So we offer full time employees a monthly stipend to cover for phone and internet costs
Company HQ
The East Cut, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Chris Best
(CEO & Co-Founder)After several software internships, they co-founded Kik Interactive in 2009, serving as CTO until 2017. At this stage, they founded Substack, and have served as CEO ever since.
Hamish McKenzie
(Chief Writing Officer & Co-Founder)Previously a journalist for several publications include The Independent and Time Out. Lead Writer for Tesla and Editorial Advisor to Kik Interactive.
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