---
title: 'Director, Strategic Business Operations (BizOps) at Substack'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-strategic-business-operations-bizops-substack-san-francisco-m3mjcgteaswc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Director, Strategic Business Operations (BizOps) at Substack

- **Company:** Substack
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack/a46a8adf-fe9e-4d6f-b1be-423f94823b66

## Job description

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, while offering them creative freedom, ownership, and a direct connection to their audiences.

We are looking for an exceptional, high-leverage Business Operations leader to serve as a strategic co-pilot to our CEO and CFO.

This is not a pure strategy seat, a deck-building role, or traditional corporate management. We are looking for an "athlete": someone with elite analytical rigor, a first-principles mindset, and the hands-on drive to build data pipelines, run complex business analyses, and personally execute high-stakes initiatives across the company.

You will sit at the center of Substack’s business—identifying bottlenecks, uncovering growth drivers, optimizing creator and reader economics, and building the operating infrastructure that scales our business.

At Substack, you’ll work directly alongside our founders and executive leadership team to shape the future of independent publishing and media. You’ll have a front-row seat—and a hands-on steering wheel—in scaling the business.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Strategic & Operational Execution: Uncover, prioritize, and drive the business’s highest-impact initiatives across product, growth, pricing, and creator economics.
- Data-Driven Business Insights: Get hands-on keyboard with our data. Perform deep-dive analyses on core metrics (e.g., creator churn, reader LTV, network monetization, conversion funnels) to guide product and monetization decisions.
- External & Market Intelligence: Conduct rigorous competitive analysis, market mapping, and strategic positioning to evaluate new opportunities, industry shifts, and expansion vectors.
- Executive Decision Support: Partner directly with the CEO and CFO to translate complex operational data into clear, actionable executive decisions and board-level strategy.
- Management Infrastructure: Design and run our business cadence—KPI tracking, operational reviews, cross-functional alignment, and objective-setting—keeping the executive team in sync and operating with discipline.
- Team Building & Leadership: Lead and mentor a lean team of operators as Substack scales, while remaining willing and eager to do the frontline analytical work yourself.

## ABOUT YOU

- Elite Foundation: 5–10 years of total work experience, including foundational years at a top-tier management consulting firm or investment bank, followed by high-impact BizOps/Strategy experience at a fast-growing tech company. Top-tier undergraduate or MBA (HBS, Stanford, Wharton, etc.) preferred.
- Hands-on Analytics: Comfortable with quantitative modeling and data manipulation. Ideally you don’t ask a team to pull numbers for you—you dig into the database yourself.
- First-Principles Problem Solver: You break down complex, messy problems into clear hypotheses and actionable frameworks before writing code or pulling data.
- Bias for Action & Execution: You don't stop at giving recommendations or making slides. You can help drive implementation end-to-end in partnership with other leaders.
- Low Ego, High Ownership: You act like an owner. You care deeply about solving the right problems for creators and readers, regardless of whether a task falls neatly into your job description.
- Executive-Level Communication: Concise, direct, and persuasive—able to influence senior executives, engineers, and creative partners alike without relying on corporate jargon.

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 $200,000 - $300,000. Multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, determine final offer amounts and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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.

Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UjmY1acxnd27iIde83PxR7XdecR29aIyfkkmEOwAMGY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.a0wuzmt3mjmm.

## About Substack

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Substack provides a platform for independent writers, podcasters, and creators to publish, build audiences, and earn revenue directly through paid subscriptions.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (with a new office in New York City)
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Chris Best (CEO), Jairaj Sethi (CTO), Hamish McKenzie (CWO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Media, Publishing, Creator Economy, SaaS
- Target customers: Individual writers, podcasters, video creators, independent publishers, media companies, experts, and educators (B2C and B2B)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To build a new economic engine for culture — empowering writers, creators, and publishers to own their work, own their audience, and earn directly from their ideas."

## Products & Services
- **Publishing Platform**: A full-featured CMS and writing tool designed for longform content, with support for posts, newsletters, scheduling, and media embedding.
- **Substack App**: A mobile and web app that connects readers with creators, featuring discovery tools like recommendations, Notes, trending topics, and leaderboards.
- **Native Podcasting**: Built-in recording studio and live video capabilities, with automatic distribution to Substack, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, including premium episode options.
- **Payments & Subscription Management**: Handles all billing, subscriber management, and revenue tools (welcome sequences, win-back campaigns, analytics). Creators keep 90% of revenue minus credit card fees.
- **Community Tools**: Subscriber chats, comment threads, and moderation features to turn publications into communities.
- **Substack Defender**: Legal support program providing publishers access to legal fees, advice, and pre-publication review for defamation, trademark, and copyright issues.
- **Network Discovery**: Built-in growth engine where more than half of new subscribers come from within Substack’s network, including recommendations and collaborations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (last raised $100M in Series C in July 2025)
- **Key Metric**: Over 5 million paid subscriptions across the network; more than 30% of paid subscriptions come from within Substack’s network; tens of millions of posts discovered daily in the app.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, The Chernin Group (TCG); part of Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch.
- **Growth Signals**: Raised $100M Series C in July 2025; team has grown to over 100 people across the US, Canada, and UK; opened a new New York City office; top writers earn millions annually.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Creator-first economic model**: Writers keep 90% of revenue, own their audience and content, and can leave anytime with no platform fees or contracts.
- **Built-in network effects**: More than half of new subscribers come from within the platform’s discovery tools, reducing the need for creators to build audiences from scratch.
- **All-in-one platform**: Combines publishing, payments, growth tools, analytics, podcasting, video, and community management — no technical expertise required.
- **Legal support**: Substack Defender provides unique legal protection that reduces risk for independent publishers.
- **Brand trust and ecosystem**: A recognized leader in the creator economy with a strong network of high-profile writers and millions of paying subscribers.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding the platform beyond newsletters into a full "media app" for all creator formats (writing, podcasting, video, live content).
- Growing the network effect through recommendations, Notes, and app-driven discovery to reduce customer acquisition costs for creators.
- Scaling the enterprise offering for media companies and full newsrooms.
- Deepening community features to increase subscriber engagement and retention.
- Building out the New York City office to expand talent and presence on the East Coast.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small but growing team (100+ people) with a strong mission-driven focus on empowering creators and independent culture. Every employee participates in customer support to build empathy with users.
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Hybrid model; employees can work from San Francisco HQ, the new New York office, or remotely across the US, Canada, and UK.
- **Benefits**: 100% premium coverage for employees and dependents (health care), fully funded HRA plans, generous parental leave, monthly internet/phone stipend, flexible vacation, 12 paid holidays, and a winter office shutdown between Christmas Eve and New Year’s.
- **Engineering Culture**: Pragmatic approach to problem-solving, shipping high-quality products; team works on a platform that directly impacts millions of creators and subscribers.
- **Perks**: Home office customization allowance, internet stipends, and a strong emphasis on work-life balance with flexible time off.

## Sources
1. [substack.com/about](https://substack.com/about)
2. [substack.com/jobs](https://substack.com/jobs)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack)
4. [builtin.com/company/substack](https://builtin.com/company/substack)
5. [linkedin.com/company/substack](https://www.linkedin.com/company/substack)

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