Product Manager, Growth

Substack Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity for all full-time roles

Exceptional benefits

Job summary

Substack Inc. is seeking a Product Manager on the Growth team to oversee user acquisition and ensure the app's discoverability. This role encompasses technical SEO, ASO optimization, and innovative onboarding strategies, significantly impacting the user experience from the first interaction to subscription.

Ideal candidates have 5-8 years of product management experience, strong analytical skills, and a passion for the creator economy. The compensation package includes a salary range of $190,000–$230,000.

Qualifications

• 5-8 years of product management experience with strong product instincts.
• Ability to navigate a product roadmap to prioritize growth work.
• Strong analytical skills for A/B testing and defining success metrics.
• Technical fluency in SEO and its implications for product changes.
• Hands-on experience with ASO, including keyword research.

Responsibilities

• Own the first-run experience end-to-end from sign-up to active user.
• Partner with teams on onboarding to improve retention.
• Conduct experiments for conversion improvement across various surfaces.
• Monitor and optimize App Store and Google Play listings.
• Lead SEO strategy to maintain strong visibility.

Skills

Product management experience

Written communication

Analytical skills

Technical SEO fluency

Hands-on ASO experience

Interest in media and publishing

Job description

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.