Product Manager, Growth

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 f