Build out Substack’s platforms to scale with growing traffic and a multitude of services to support writer and reader communities.
Contribute to the whole product process in collaboration with designers, writers, support staff, and others. From product concept and research to implementation and deployment, we expect you to own your work and deliver high-quality solutions.
We primarily work with Node/Express, Postgres, and Redis, and our cloud infrastructure is hosted on AWS. It’s helpful if you know some of these technologies already, if not, we’ll be excited to help you learn.

5+ years of software engineering experience.
Can contribute across the full web stack, with a focus on building resilient, scalable backend systems.
Independent and autonomous. We’re too small to micromanage, and expect that every person at the company owns their work and can be a leader.
Hold yourself and others to a high standard when working on production systems.
Take pride in building elegant and delightful product experiences. Substack works best when it gets out of the way so writers can focus on writing and connecting with their readers.
Enjoy collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders while bringing your own unique experience and background to the team.
Believe in Substack’s mission to build a better business model for writing.

Systems Engineer

Key skills