About Substack
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Substack helps independent writers, podcasters, artists, and other creators build businesses around their work. Creators retain ownership of what they publish and build direct relationships with the people who value it.
Our Sponsorships team is building another way for creators to earn, alongside paid subscriptions. We’re looking for a product manager to help brands connect with these communities while preserving publisher choice and reader trust.
The Role
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You’ll lead product for Substack Sponsorships, from new sponsorship formats and advertiser and publisher tools to the foundations of a scalable marketplace. You’ll partner with Engineering, Design, Data, Partnerships, and the Sponsorships business team to turn early campaign needs into products that serve the broader network.
This is a hands-on role with broad ownership. You’ll spend time with publishers and advertisers, write product requirements, work through design and technical decisions, and ship and iterate with engineers. You should be comfortable moving between business strategy and the details of a sign-up flow, campaign report, or publisher approval experience.
What You’ll Do
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- •Set the product direction. Use conversations with publishers and advertisers, product data, and company priorities to build a roadmap across near-term experiments and longer-term platform work. Turn lessons from early campaigns into products that work across thousands of publications.
- •Build distinctive sponsorship experiences. Develop formats that fit naturally into Substack across email, web, and app, including sponsorships that help readers discover writers, access paid work, and become subscribers.
- •Own the advertiser experience. Make it easy for brands and agencies to discover relevant publications, plan and book campaigns, manage creative approvals, and understand results. Build the path from managed campaigns to self-service buying.
- •Make sponsorships work for publishers. Create simple tools to opt in, set preferences, approve opportunities, manage placements, and track earnings. Preserve publishers’ control over which brands they work with and how sponsorships appear in their work.
- •Build the marketplace and operating foundation. Partner with Engineering and Ad Operations on matching, inventory forecasting, campaign delivery, pacing, billing, and payouts. Decide what to build and where external technology or demand partners can accelerate progress.
- •Prove advertiser value and product impact. Own the measurement roadmap across delivery, reach, engagement, brand lift, and conversion outcomes. Define success metrics, dashboards, and experiments with Data and measurement partners, while respecting reader privacy.
- •Balance growth with trust. Partner with Policy, Legal, and core Product on advertiser eligibility, sponsorship disclosure, data use, and ad quality. Evaluate revenue opportunities alongside their effects on reader experience and subscription retention.
- •Own execution and adoption. Partner with your Engineering counterpart to scope, prototype, and ship improvements. Work with the Sponsorships business team on launch plans, product education, and adoption, then use campaign results and customer feedback to decide what to improve next.
What We’re Looking For
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- •10+ years of product management experience, including meaningful ownership of advertising, monetization, or marketplace products and a record of delivering work across teams.
- •A track record of launching new products and growing adoption and revenue. You can explain the decisions you made, the tradeoffs involved, and the results.
- •A strong understanding of how brands and agencies buy media, how publishers earn revenue, and how campaign delivery and measurement work.
- •Technical fluency across ad serving, data systems, APIs, and third-party integrations, with the judgment to choose practical solutions for an early-stage business.
- •Strong product judgment and analytical skills. You can investigate customer behavior, build your own analyses, choose useful success metrics, and interpret experiments. You balance ease of use, commercial needs, and long-term product quality.
- •High agency and clear written communication. You can make a persuasive case for a priority, write a useful product spec, and explain decisions to technical and commercial partners. You’re willing to work through the details needed to get something shipped.
- •An understanding of Substack’s product and the needs of its creators and readers. You care about independent publishing and can explain how sponsorships can help creators build sustainable businesses while preserving their relationship with their audiences.
Especially relevant experience
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Building an advertising business from its early stages; developing self-service buying or publisher mo