Product Operations (Brand Partnerships)

Substack; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work support

Comprehensive health care

Parental leave

Flexible vacation

Paid holidays

Phone & internet stipend

Job summary

Substack is building its sponsorships business and seeks an Implementation Lead to scale campaigns into a marketplace. You’ll own trafficking, QA, launch, and delivery, and you’ll translate between brands, ad ops, and solutions teams.

This founding role emphasizes building tooling, automating where possible, and shaping playbooks for custom formats. You’ll collaborate with design and engineering on tooling decisions, contribute to AI-driven demand engines, and manage end-to-end sponsorship

Qualifications

• Fluency with data and strong spreadsheet skills.
• Experience with SQL, scripting, APIs, Python or JavaScript is a plus.
• Hands-on experience with campaign trafficking and third-party measurement.
• Familiarity with ad operations and measurement vendors.

Responsibilities

• Own trafficking, QA, launch, delivery monitoring for custom sponsorship formats.
• Execute on order management, campaign workflows, reporting, and billing handoffs.
• Implement and maintain integrations (tracking, measurement, verification) for non-standard formats.
• Serve as first-line solutions lead for brands/agencies and translate technical details.
• Collaborate with design and engineering to decide tooling vs manual work as volume grows.
• Contribute to an AI-first outbound and onboarding engine to drive demand.
• Write playbooks and documentation for custom formats.

Skills

Fluency with data

SQL

Scripting

APIs

Python

JavaScript

Campaign trafficking

Measurement vendors

Ad operations

Workflow automation

Third-party measurement

Job description

• We’re building Substack’s sponsorships business from the ground up. The Implementation Lead makes campaigns scale into a marketplace. You own the operational backbone of the business: campaign workflows, integrations/operations, and marketplace quality that makes it all happen. When a brand’s ad ops team and solutions engineers need to understand each other, you’re the translator. This is a founding role on a small team and a build role
• Own trafficking, QA, launch, delivery monitoring for custom sponsorship formats
• Execute on the pipes for the business: order management, campaign workflows, reporting, and billing handoffs
• Implement and maintain the integrations brands expect — tracking, third-party measurement, verification — adapted to formats that standard tags and pixels weren’t built for
• Serve as first-line solutions lead for brands and agencies operating in the marketplace, and be the translator when their ad ops team needs to understand how our formats actually work
• Work with design and engineering to decide what deserves real tooling now versus what stays a manual workaround until there’s volume to justify automating it
• Contribute to an AI-first outbound and onboarding engine to drive demand into the marketplace
• Write the playbooks and documentation — since for custom formats, the playbook usually doesn’t exist until you write it

Benefits

• Remote work support - All employees receive a generous allowance to customize their home offices
• Comprehensive health care - Substack covers 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents, and fully funds HRA plans
• Parental leave - We want employees to be fully present for the new members of their family, so we offer generous parental leave
• Flexible vacation and paid time off - You’re the best person to decide when you need a day—or a week—off to travel or decompress. Our flexible vacation policy puts you in control
• Company holidays and Winter shutdown - In addition to flexible time off, we honor 12 paid holidays annually on average. And we close the office between Christmas Eve and New Year’s day to recharge each year
• Phone & internet stipends - Many of our employees work from home or on the go. So we offer full time employees a monthly stipend to cover for phone and internet costs

Fluency with data: strong spreadsheet skills at minimum, SQL and scripting a real advantage, and the judgment to know when a number looks wrong Experience with APIs, workflow automation, or light scripting (Python, JavaScript) is a plus Experience sitting in on sales calls to answer technical questions and scope feasibility on custom or unfamiliar formats in real time An operator’s instinct for process: you build systems that scale without over-engineering before there’s volume to justify it Familiarity with how creator sponsorships are sold, delivered, and measured is a plus The range to debug a delivery discrepancy with an agency in the morning and spec an internal tool with an engineer in the afternoon 10+ years in ad operations, solutions engineering, or technical account management at a platform, publisher, or ad tech company Hands-on experience with campaign trafficking, tag management, and third-party measurement or verification vendors — and comfort when the format doesn’t fit the vendor’s assumptions