Substack - Product Designer

• Design at Substack • Experienced designers know that commercial and economic realities shape the possibility spaces of product strategy. If success for a company means “selling more ads,” designers may achieve a lovely user interface or ideal typography, but everything will be in service of producing the same strange, often-nightmarish dynamics we all know from the many scaled platforms of the past decade. • Substack does not have silver bullets for the problems of human nature, and we will not avoid the costs of creating scaled platforms. But we do have a different model, one in which we make money only when creatives of all kinds earn money from audiences who value them enough to consistently pay them. Crucially, in this model, all scales are reduced: one needs thousands, not millions, of fans, and this difference alone changes the dynamics of the platform, and thus what’s possible with e.g. product architecture. As fundamental, though, is the level of trust and interest involved in paid subscriptions. “What works” for Substack is what leads people to make long-term and real investments in independent creatives and collectives, and we hope this will lead to improved outcomes in aggregate across many types of features. • If you’re interested in working on this model, we’d love to chat! Design at Substack is somewhat wild, and we’re looking for rigorous, robust, high-output designers who are comfortable with the vagaries and dynamism of startup life. We are not a “best practices” shop; we have very little fixed process; we work closely with executives and other functions and we’re not territorial or precious. But we get to shape the development of the most promising platform for creatives, we have a lovely and weird little team, and we have a lot of fun in our quite-free and friendly company. If this sounds compelling, hit us up! • All product design applications must link to or include a portfolio. This portfolio needn't be overly polished, although excellently presented work might stand out; our focus will above all be on whether you've demonstrated the capacity to craft design solutions in relevant or related product areas • 3 years of experience designing software; we're especially keen to see experience with social networks; content networks; or content systems or products of various kinds; but any experience building software interfaces applies. • High degree of competence with Figma. • High tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Substack is still becoming a company, and much remains up for debate; everything from cycle plans to organizational structure to top-line strategy can change —and will— so a certain degree of adventurousness or heartiness is required, as it can all get rather messy! • Interest in both independence and collaboration. Sometimes, we must be team players; at other times, we must strike out to explore and find new areas of opportunity. You should be at least comfortable with both modes of operation. If you cannot abide sometimes being asked to act as a service designer, or you cannot work without someone guiding every decision, you will struggle. • Technical abilities. While it’s not a requirement, we’ll be very excited to see candidates who can code. Specifically, we highly value strong front-end skills, experience making and deploying sites, and experience with TypeScript and React. We’re also of course very keen on candidates with SwiftUI capabilities. Current product designers with these skills use them often and to great effect, but we also appreciate that technical designers are “into software” as a whole. • We are also naturally interested in designers who’ve made use of LLMs to enhance their workflows in ways not related to product (for example with variation, prototyping, etc.) • Remember that these are preferences, not requirements. • SF Bay Area- or NYC-based. Living near our offices (in either city) means being able to work directly with colleagues, so it’s very slightly preferred. But most of us —including our Head of Design— are fully remote, and remote candidates shouldn’t feel discouraged from applying. • Substack’s compensation package includes a market-competitive salary, equity for all full-time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation salary range for this role is $150K - $215K / year (USD). Multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, determine final offer amounts and may vary from the amounts listed above.