---
title: 'Product Manager - Sponsorships at Substack'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-sponsorships-substack-new-york-g0tg7z0qm7fr'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-18'
---

# Product Manager - Sponsorships at Substack

- **Company:** Substack
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack/fb45e47d-34ef-43c3-a49f-f0223d943161

## Job description

## About Substack

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

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

- 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

- 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 Building an advertising business from its early stages; developing self-service buying or publisher monetization tools; working with creator, newsletter, podcast, or subscription businesses; and integrating measurement or programmatic demand partners.

What success looks like More publishers earning meaningful income from sponsorships they choose. Advertisers returning because they can demonstrate results. Campaigns launching with less manual work and reliable delivery and payouts. A growing sponsorship business that supports healthy reader engagement and paid subscriptions.

## 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 $185,000–$250,000. 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. 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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