Substack is building a new economic engine for culture — a publishing platform where creators earn directly from subscribers, not advertisers. Design here is somewhat wild: very little fixed process, close collaboration with executives, and real creative ownership over one of the most promising platforms for independent creators.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
• Rapidly build context about disparate product areas, community dynamics, and industry norms — from print media to podcasting to online social systems
• Identify high-leverage opportunities and make their pursuit practicable through rigorous path-conception, batch-sizing, staging, and go-to-market planning
• Design beautiful, usable, scalable interfaces for a wide range of product zones — profiles, CRM/analytics, publication aesthetics, moderation systems, email layouts, interactive content, and more
• Think holistically about second-order effects on Substack as a product system; balance user groups and weigh trade-offs
• Help diversify the kinds of creators Substack supports through novel media types and alternative reader experiences
• Shape the culture and processes of Design at Substack
WHO YOU ARE
• 3+ years designing software; experience with social networks, content networks, or content systems especially valued
• High competence with Figma
• High tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity — Substack is still becoming a company and things change fast
• Comfortable with both independent exploration and close collaboration
• Technical abilities are a meaningful plus: strong front-end skills, TypeScript, React, SwiftUI, or LLM-enhanced workflows all valued (not required)