Product Manager - Creator Activation

Substack

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 and a product role first. You'll own the organic side of our user acquisition flywheel, ensuring that Substack is discoverable at every surface where people are looking for great writing and ideas, and that when they find us, the experience from first click to first subscription is as frictionless as possible. You'll report to the Head of Growth. You'll work most closely with the Activation team on the onboarding and post-onboarding arc, and with Growth Marketing on ASO, paid-to-organic handoffs, and bespoke App Store landing pages. This is a hybrid role in the truest sense: you'll write PRDs and work with engineers one day, and audit keyword rankings or optimize an App Store listing the next. You should be comfortable in both modes and know which one the moment calls for. WHAT YOU'LL DO USER SIGN-UP & ONBOARDING * Own the first-run experience end-to-end: app splash, sign-up flow, first-session orientation, and the handoffs that turn a new install into an active reader * Partner with the Activation team on the post-onboarding arc — ensuring the moves we make in the first 60 seconds compound through the first week and beyond * 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) * Define and instrument the funnel events needed to measure quality across the sign-up and activation journey APP STORE OPTIMIZATION (ASO) * Own App Store and Google Play listing optimization across all Substack surfaces: the main app listing, bespoke vertical landing pages, and creator-specific pages * Design and run experiments to improve install conversion rates — working with creative and data teams to test copy, screenshots, preview videos, and ratings/review strategy * Partner with Growth Marketing on paid-to-organic handoffs, particularly where paid campaigns drive traffic to custom App Store landing pages and ASO affects the downstream conversion rate * Monitor competitor ASO strategies and maintain keyword coverage across category-relevant and creator-adjacent search terms in both stores SEO * Own Substack's SEO strategy — protecting and extending an already-strong position rather than rebuilding it * Partner with product and engineering to ensure any product-level changes (new pages, URL structures, navigation, rendering, indexability) have SEO and AEO implications accounted for before launching WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * 5-8 years Product management experience and strong product instincts: you've written specs, worked in sprints with engineers, and understand how to navigate a product roadmap to get growth work prioritized * High agency and strong written communication — this role requires influencing engineering and product partners, which means making crisp cases for why growth work should be prioritized * Strong analytical skills — you can build your own analyses, define the right success metrics for an experiment, and know the difference between a signal and noise in an A/B test * Technical SEO fluency — you understand how rendering, crawlability, structured data, Core Web Vitals, and site architecture affect rankings, and you can have a substantive conversation with an engineer about any of them * Hands-on ASO experience including keyword research, listing copy optimization, creative testing, and conversion rate analysis across both the App Store and Google Play * Experience with answer engine optimization (AEO) and an understanding of how AI-powered search is changing organic discovery — or a clear point of view on how to think about it * Genuine interest in media, publishing, and the creator economy WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW Substack Is quickly becoming much more than just an email newsletter product. Our app is the newest and most valuable strategic asset as it is a force multiplier in the growth of the homegrown Substack network, which has propelled Substack to become a cultural phenomenon that millions of people come to daily. You'll operate at the center of this growth, with the product and engineering partnership, the data access, and the mandate to accelerate the organic flywheel. 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. Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here.

Substack

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. THE ROLE This is a new role focused on our Enterprise creator segment: the most sophisticated publications and partners building on top of Substack. You’ll work directly with these enterprise creators to understand the bespoke needs of their publications, synthesize those needs into clear product requirements, and translate one-off requests into durable, reusable systems and features that strengthen the entire Substack ecosystem. You’ll operate at the intersection of creator empathy, platform thinking, and executive alignment. Success in this role means: deeply understanding how creators use (and benefit from) Substack’s network and platform, and ensuring that what we build for enterprise partners scales across the org, rather than becoming pigeonholed into individual partner needs. WHAT YOU’LL DO ENTERPRISE PARTNER PRODUCT STRATEGY * Form a deep understanding of the current state of play in our creator platform, and identify the biggest opportunities for development and growth * Work directly with Key Enterprise Partners who build on top of Substack to synthesize their requests and package them into roadmaps for durable product features that can be used across the rest of the Substack network and ecosystem * Ensure enterprise-facing work ladders up into reusable primitives, systems, and platform capabilities ROADMAP & EXECUTION * Build a compelling roadmap at the short term, medium term, and long term horizons * Help design and spec projects across the spectrum from experiment, to feature, to large-scale initiative * Partner with your EM counterpart to inspire and lead a full-stack team of engineers, designers, and product analysts, creating clarity and accountability for them at every level CROSS-FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP & GTM * Work closely with the leadership team to ensure that your team’s product strategy and the overall company strategy are in lock-step at all times * Fully own the product marketing and go-to-market strategy for everything the team ships WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR * 4+ years of experience as a Product Manager * A deep understanding of Substack’s product, user base, and market position * Empathy for creators and a clear mental model for how creators use and benefit from Substack’s network and platform * Comfortable operating at every level of abstraction (from high level product/business strategy to “what should the CTA say” level details) * Deep experience with software design; you have demonstrated the ability to service user needs while balancing ease of use and flexibility * Independent ability to build charts and tools using current software development tools (you can vibe code some things) * Strong analytical skills, competence in SQL and experience with BI tools like Sisense; frameworks like cohort analysis and growth accounting should be second nature * Strong communication skills: able to write a compelling strategy doc, internal or external blog post, and present to the company regularly * An ability to roll up your sleeves and do what needs to be done WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW Our enterprise creators are pushing the edge of what Substack can enable: sophisticated editorial operations, custom integrations, and ambitious audience and subscription strategies. Their needs are often “ahead of the product”, which makes them an ideal forcing function for building stronger platform systems. This role exists to turn that forcing function into leverage: translating bespoke partner needs into reusable, scalable capabilities that improve Substack for every creator, strengthen our network effects, and align tightly with company strategy. 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. Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here.

Substack

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 now come to Substack directly, and our app is the primary destination for our most engaged users. We're building the subscription network of the internet, and we're looking for a sharp, execution-oriented growth leader to build paid acquisition from the ground up. THE ROLE This is Substack's first dedicated paid acquisition hire. You'll own the strategy and execution of paid media across all channels — with an immediate focus on driving net-new, app-first user acquisition at efficient cost. You'll report to the Head of Growth and operate as a key member of the growth team at a pivotal moment: we have strong organic momentum, a proven gifting and referral flywheel within the existing user base, and now we're ready to scale growth beyond it. This is a high-ownership role. You'll manage budget, own channel strategy, run creative testing, instrument measurement infrastructure, and work cross-functionally with product, data, and creator partnerships to make it all work. You'll define what paid acquisition looks like at Substack including the frameworks, the channels, the metrics, and eventually the team. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Own paid acquisition end-to-end: strategy, execution, optimization, and reporting across Meta, Google UAC, YouTube, TikTok, podcast, and emerging channels * Design and run rigorous experiments to find efficient CAC on net-new users — people who have never been on Substack before * Build and manage our MMP infrastructure including deferred deep linking, in-app event tracking, and ad platform integrations * Partner with creator partnerships to develop first-party ad creative featuring Substack writers, and establish the playbook for creator-led paid campaigns * Build and maintain lookalike audience pipelines, working with our data team to turn high-quality install cohorts into scalable targeting seeds * Define the right optimization signals at each stage of maturity, from install volume in the learning phase to subscription starts at scale, and work with product and engineering to ensure those events are correctly instrumented and passed to ad platforms * Develop a clear framework for CPI targets and payback windows grounded in install-cohort LTV data, and evolve it as we learn * Collaborate with product on the new user onboarding experience, particularly the deferred deep link personalization flow that connects ad creative to first app experience * Own budget pacing and efficiency reporting, and communicate performance clearly to leadership * Eventually hire and develop a small team as the function grows WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * 5–8 years of experience in performance marketing or paid user acquisition, with meaningful time spent at a consumer subscription app or subscription media product * Deep channel expertise across Meta and at least one other major channel (Google UAC, YouTube, TikTok); experience with podcast and influencer-driven acquisition is a plus * Hands-on experience with an MMP (AppsFlyer strongly preferred) including attribution setup, deferred deep linking, event schema design, and fraud prevention * Strong analytical foundation — you're comfortable in SQL, know your way around a data warehouse, and can build your own cohort analyses rather than waiting for a data team to do it for you * Experience building lookalike audience pipelines and thinking rigorously about seed quality, audience overlap, and creative-audience fit * Sharp instincts for creative — you don't need to design ads yourself, but you know what makes a good hook, can brief creative teams and creators effectively, and have a framework for testing and iterating on ad concepts * Fluency with LTV modeling and payback window thinking; you understand why CPI is the wrong primary metric and can articulate what the right one is in a given context * High agency and low ego. This role requires building something from scratch, which means doing unglamorous instrumentation work alongside high-leverage strategy. You're comfortable with both * Genuine curiosity about media, writing, and the creator economy. You should care about what Substack is building, not just the acquisition funnel * Based in San Francisco or New York WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW Paid acquisition at Substack is genuinely greenfield. We have strong data infrastructure, a product with real retention and monetization, a growing app with millions of daily active users, and an expanding network of some of the world’s most influential creators. The challenge (and the opportunity) is extending that to cold audiences at scale. You'll have the budget, the data access, the cross-functional support, and the mandate to figure it out. If you've been looking for a role where you can genuinely own a growth channel and build something that matters, this is it. 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 $170,000–$210,000. 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. Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here.