Full Stack Software Engineer, Substack
Growth
$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
- 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
- Experience at a fast-growing startup or working on a high-performing growth team is not required, but is a plus
- 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
What the job involves
- As a member of Substack’s Activation team, you will be responsible for building and testing features that bring new readers and creators to Substack and help them succeed and stick around
- The team's goal is to help consumers find things they love, and to help creators find an audience and make a living
- Engineers work in close partnership with designers, product thinkers, and our users to make it easier and more efficient for Substack’s discovery engines to run
- Develop features that help writers make more money on Substack
- Design and run experiments to improve sign-up conversion, first-action completion, and D1 / D7 retention, with particular attention to users arriving from different surfaces (organic search, App Store browse, creator-shared links, paid campaigns)
- Build tools and features to help new creators find an audience and build a publishing habit
- Collaborate 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 operate autonomously
- We work with TypeScript, 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
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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