Product Manager - Growth

About Substack

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. Substack empowers independent writers, artists, videographers, podcasters, and creators of all types to create, share, and make a living off their work through subscriptions — offering them creative freedom, ownership, and a direct connection to their audiences.

We're growing fast. Millions of readers come to Substack directly every month, and our app is the primary destination for our most engaged users. We're looking for a rare hybrid — someone who thinks like a product manager, works closely with engineers, and has deep expertise in the organic growth levers that compound over time: SEO, ASO, and new user onboarding.

The Role

This is a new role on the Growth team, focused on growing the entire Substack ecosystem. You'll own product-led growth across both sides of our network: helping more creators successfully launch and grow, helping more readers discover and engage with great work, and converting more of that engagement into paid subscriptions.

You'll report to the Head of Growth and work primarily with the Activation engineering team, in close partnership with Data, Growth Marketing, Creator Experience, and other product teams. Your scope will span new user app acquisition, reader onboarding and activation, payer funnels, and creator onboarding and activation. You'll identify the highest-leverage opportunities across these connected journeys and turn them into durable growth loops that strengthen the ecosystem as a whole.

This is a product management role for someone who can move fluidly between strategy and execution. You'll diagnose funnel constraints, build a clear roadmap, write crisp PRDs, partner closely with engineers and designers, and run experiments from idea through measurement. You should be equally comfortable improving an individual conversion step and reasoning about how creators, readers, and payers reinforce one another across the network.

What You'll Do

Consumer Growth

• Build and improve product loops that bring new readers into the Substack app through sharing, referrals, creator distribution, content discovery, and other scalable channels
• Own the consumer journey from first touch through app install, account creation, onboarding, engagement, and early retention
• Improve payer funnels, helping more engaged readers discover publications they value, understand the benefits of subscribing, and become long-term paid subscribers
• Partner with Growth Marketing, Data, Design, and Engineering on acquisition strategy, attribution, experimentation, and campaign-to-product handoffs

Creator Growth

• Own the creator journey from initial intent through publication setup, launch, onboarding, activation, and early retention
• Identify the behaviors that predict creator success and build experiences that help more creators reach those milestones quickly
• Improve creator growth loops across audience import, sharing and referrals, reader conversion, paid offering setup, and pathways from publishing to earning
• Partner across Creator Experience, Partnerships, Growth Marketing, Data, Design, and Engineering to diagnose funnel constraints, run experiments, and build a holistic creator growth roadmap

What We're Looking For

• An ambitious, founder-type product manager with 5–8 years of experience
• Comfort with ambiguity: you can find structure in an unclear problem, form a strong point of view, and move from strategy to execution without waiting for perfect information
• The curiosity and analytical depth to go very deep on a problem, understand its underlying mechanics, and keep pushing until you've found the highest-leverage solution
• Experience working on multi-sided marketplaces, networks, or ecosystems, with a strong intuition for how to create value for and balance the needs of different participants
• Familiarity with Substack, alignment with our mission, and a thoughtful perspective on media, publishing, and the creator economy
• Ideally, experience across both early-stage startups and larger companies, bringing the rigor and craft of the latter while operating with the speed, resourcefulness, and scrappiness of the former
• Strong product judgment and communication skills, with the ability to earn trust and align engineering, design, data, and cross-functional partners around a clear direction

Why This Role, Why Now

Substack's opportunity is bigger than any single funnel. Every successful creator brings distinctive work and an audience; every engaged reader creates more opportunity for creators; and every paid subscription strengthens the entire ecosystem. We have meaningful scale on both sides of the network, but many of the product loops connecting creator success, reader growth, and paid conversion are still underdeveloped.

We're now investing in a dedicated Growth team to improve those loops end to end. That means making it easier for promising creators to start and reach activation, helping new users quickly find value in the app, creating better paths from engagement to payment, and building acquisition mechanics that compound through the network.

You'll have a close partnership with the Activation engineering team, access to data, and a broad mandate across creator and consumer growth. If you're a product-shaped growth leader who wants to build the systems that turn creators into thriving publishers, readers into engaged users, and engagement into sustainable revenue, this is the role.

Compensation

Substack's compensation package includes a market-competitive salary, equity for all full-time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation range for this role is $190,000–$230,000. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise.

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.

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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