Employer: Substack
Substack lets writers connect with their audience on their own terms and earn money doing it. We make it simple for writers to publish to an email list that they own, get discovered on the web, and charge for subscriptions.
More than 500,000 people pay to subscribe to writers across the Substack network, and the top writers make millions of dollars a year. Substack’s model depends on the success of writers using Substack – we only make money when they do.
“Substack makes it dead simple to start a newsletter and get paid for it.†– Judd Legum, author of Popular Information
“Substack gives me a way to connect with my audience on my own terms.†– Lyz Lenz, author of God Land and Men Yell At Me
Make something that matters
- Great writing is valuable. It respects readers’ time, their intelligence, and their trust. It helps us make sense of and change the culture we live in. At Substack, we’re building a business model that enables great writing to thrive. Learn more about our opportunity and mission.
- We are a small but growing team, and there is more to build than we could ever imagine. That’s why we need you. We believe that engineering is in service to the community of writers and readers on Substack: we’re successful when they’re successful.
- We aim to take pragmatic approaches to problem solving while shipping high-quality products that allow the writing on Substack to take the spotlight.
- Every person at the company participates in customer support. We do this to build empathy with our users and enable us to build better products.
- We believe that a diverse team will help us build a product that best serves the needs of a wildly diverse ecosystem of writers. So whatever your background or perspective, we’d welcome your input to help build the best possible version of Substack.
Systems Engineers at Substack are responsible for building the foundational infrastructure, tooling, and systems that enable product engineering and feature development. They are tasked with finding ways to architect systems that can operate at high scale while allowing flexibility in the face of a startup’s fast-growing product ecosystem. Systems engineers work closely with product thinkers and other engineers at the organization to prioritize, fund, and build out the next generation of infrastructure for Substack.
Responsibilities
- Build out Substack’s serving platforms to scale with growing traffic and a multitude of services to support the writer and reader communities.
- Partner with engineers and other stakeholders to design resilient and responsive architecture and solutions.
- Contribute to the whole product process in collaboration 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 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.
- We work with JavaScript, 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.
Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering experience.
- Can contribute across the full web stack, especially on backend systems and scaling.
- 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.
Substack is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, 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.
