iOS Engineer, Substack
Sponsorships
$140-260k
+ Equity
Platform for writers & podcasters
Be an early applicant
Platform for writers & podcasters
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$140-260k
+ 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
- At least 3+ years of software engineering experience
- Experience shipping high quality, native iOS apps to the App Store. Bonus for both SwiftUI and UIKit
- 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 creators 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
- Experience at a fast-growing startup or working on a high-performing growth team is not required, but is a plus
What the job involves
- Our team’s goal is to augment our existing direct subscriptions model with paid sponsorships. Brands are interested in connecting with Substack creators, and Substack creators are interested in making more money, but we want to support this behavior in a way that doesn’t degrade the user experience or undermine trust in the platform
- Everyone contributes to the product direction. Our team regularly brainstorms directly with leadership, and every engineer contributes ideas for new products and experiences
- We also sometimes work directly with our Sponsorship partners (e.g. Polymarket) to develop new experiences
- We’re a small team of generalists, so we especially value an interest in working across our tech stack, willingness to prototype, and product-mindedness
- You’d be the iOS leader on this team, so code review, mentorship and thoughtful technical architecting will also be key pieces of this role
- Develop new and existing sponsorship experiences in the core iOS app for creators and their audiences
- Contribute to high level product and brainstorming discussions around sponsorship experiences
- Iterate on key flows in the Substack mobile apps and web platform, and run A/B tests
- Collaborate with designers, writers, support staff, and many others. From product concept and research to implementation, experimentation, and measurement, 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
- Our team also works directly with Sponsorship partners (we often say “build-with” partners) to gather product ideas and find solutions that work for both brands and creators
Our take
Substack is an online platform for journalists and writers to manage subscription-based newsletters. It has attracted a range of users who wish to connect with their audiences in a different way to social media or ad-based models, and boasts more than 35 million subscribers.
For an industry that has seen a steady decline in its fortunes since the rise of digital, Substack is a breath of fresh air. It allows journalists to avoid the clickbait-heavy models that have dominated the last decade, and provides more freedom than its competitors. Users produce their newsletters on the site for free, charging an optional subscription fee of which Substack takes 10%.
The company continues to seek out ways to diversify its offerings, whilst securing funding rounds to expand its reach. It has also taken an outspoken approach to the AI-generated content that is taking over the internet. It already provides its users access to an AI-detection tool, and is exploring other features such as enabling users to opt out of seeing AI-generated content on their feeds altogether.
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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