Product Growth Manager, Organic

Substack•San Francisco, CA

1d•$190,000 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Substack is seeking a rare hybrid individual for a new role on the Growth team, sitting at the intersection of product and marketing. This role will own the organic side of user acquisition, ensuring Substack's discoverability and optimizing the user experience from first click to first subscription. The position requires a blend of product management skills, engineering collaboration, and deep expertise in organic growth levers such as SEO, ASO, and new user onboarding. The role reports to the Head of Growth and will collaborate closely with the Head of Paid Acquisition on shared infrastructure and strategies. This is a hybrid role in practice, involving both technical product work and marketing-focused optimization. Key responsibilities include owning Substack's SEO strategy, ensuring product changes account for SEO implications, optimizing website and publication pages, staying ahead of answer engine optimization (AEO), and developing an SEO performance dashboard. Additionally, the role involves owning App Store and Google Play listing optimization, designing experiments to improve app install conversion rates, monitoring competitor ASO, and managing top-of-funnel attribution infrastructure. This includes improving deferred deep linking and working with product/engineering to iterate on the new user onboarding experience, defining and instrumenting funnel events to measure organic acquisition quality.

Requirements

5–8 years of experience spanning SEO, ASO, and/or product growth, with demonstrable depth in at least two of the three.
Product management experience or strong product instincts, including writing specs, working in sprints with engineers, and navigating product roadmaps.
Technical SEO fluency, understanding rendering, crawlability, structured data, Core Web Vitals, and site architecture.
Hands-on ASO experience including keyword research, listing copy optimization, creative testing, and conversion rate analysis.
Familiarity with MMP infrastructure (AppsFlyer preferred), deferred deep linking, and attribution modeling for organic channels.
Strong analytical skills, ability to build analyses, define success metrics, and differentiate signal from noise in A/B tests.
Experience with answer engine optimization (AEO) or a clear point of view on how AI-powered search is changing organic discovery.
High agency and strong written communication skills for influencing partners without direct authority.
Genuine interest in media, publishing, and the creator economy.

Responsibilities

Own Substack's SEO strategy across branded and non-branded queries, protecting and growing domain authority, expanding reach into high-intent topic and creator-adjacent searches, and tracking ranking performance.
Partner with product and engineering to ensure SEO implications are accounted for in product-level changes before shipping.
Own SEO across the website and publication pages, including structured data, page speed, crawlability, and content architecture.
Stay ahead of the curve on answer engine optimization (AEO), ensuring Substack content and creator pages are well-represented in AI-generated search results.
Develop and maintain an SEO performance dashboard for visibility into organic traffic trends, ranking movements, and opportunity sizing.
Own App Store and Google Play listing optimization across all Substack surfaces.
Design and run experiments to improve app install conversion rates, testing copy, screenshots, preview videos, and ratings/review strategy.
Partner with the Head of Paid Acquisition on paid-to-organic handoffs, particularly concerning custom App Store landing pages and ASO's impact on conversion rates.
Monitor competitor ASO strategies and maintain keyword coverage across relevant search terms in both app stores.
Own top-of-funnel attribution infrastructure in partnership with engineering and the paid acquisition team.
Manage and improve deferred deep linking setup for organic entry points.
Work with product and engineering to design and iterate on the new user onboarding experience, focusing on users from organic channels.
Define and instrument funnel events to measure organic acquisition quality from first touch through first paid conversion.