Systems Engineer

📋 Description

• • Join Substack Inc. as a Systems Engineer and play a pivotal role in constructing the foundational infrastructure, tooling, and systems that empower our product engineering teams and drive feature development. You will be instrumental in supporting Substack’s rapidly expanding product ecosystem, ensuring its scalability and reliability at web scale. This role offers a unique opportunity to collaborate closely with diverse product teams, shaping the next generation of infrastructure that underpins our mission.
• • At Substack, we are dedicated to building a new economic engine for culture, empowering creators with a publishing platform that prioritizes their autonomy and direct connection with their audiences. Our model, centered on direct subscriptions, has already fostered a significant surge in independent publishing, providing creators with economic independence and creative ownership. As a Systems Engineer, you will be at the forefront of enabling this vision by ensuring our technical backbone is robust, efficient, and capable of supporting this growth.
• • Your primary responsibility will involve building out Substack’s platforms to seamlessly scale with increasing traffic and a growing multitude of services designed to support both writer and reader communities. This includes architecting and implementing solutions that can handle high volumes of data and user interactions while maintaining optimal performance and availability.
• • You will be an integral part of the entire product lifecycle, from initial concept and research through to implementation and deployment. We expect you to take full ownership of your work, driving projects to completion and delivering high-quality, impactful solutions. This collaborative approach extends to working closely with designers, writers, support staff, and other cross-functional teams, ensuring a holistic and user-centric development process.
• • Our technology stack primarily utilizes Node/Express for backend services, Postgres for our relational database needs, and Redis for caching and session management. Our cloud infrastructure is hosted on AWS, leveraging its comprehensive suite of services for scalability and reliability. While prior experience with these specific technologies is beneficial, we are enthusiastic about supporting your learning and development, providing opportunities to gain expertise in these areas.
• • A key aspect of this role is contributing to the development of resilient and scalable backend systems. You will be tasked with designing, building, and maintaining the core services that power Substack’s platform, ensuring they are robust, secure, and performant under heavy load. This involves a deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and best practices for building highly available applications.
• • We foster an environment of independence and autonomy. Substack is a lean organization where micromanagement is not the norm. We expect every team member to own their work, take initiative, and act as a leader within their domain. This self-starter mentality is crucial for our continued success and rapid innovation.
• • Upholding a high standard for production systems is paramount. You will be responsible for ensuring the stability, reliability, and performance of the systems you build and maintain. This includes implementing rigorous testing, monitoring, and incident response procedures to minimize downtime and ensure a seamless experience for our users.
• • We believe in taking pride in building elegant and delightful product experiences. Substack’s success hinges on its ability to get out of the way, allowing writers to focus on their craft and connect with their readers. Your engineering efforts should directly contribute to this seamless user experience, making our platform intuitive and efficient.
• • Collaboration is at the heart of our culture. You will enjoy working with a diverse group of stakeholders, bringing your unique experience, background, and perspective to the team. We value open communication, constructive feedback, and a shared commitment to our mission.
• • Ultimately, you will be joining a team that is deeply passionate about Substack’s mission to build a better business model for writing and independent creators. If you are excited by the prospect of enabling independent expression and contributing to a more equitable media landscape, we encourage you to apply.