Why we’re hiring a community manager at Medium

Help us build the best place to read and write on the internet

We’re hiring for a Community Manager. The basics: It’s a remote, full-time role for U.S.-based candidates, within our Content team, reporting to product marketing. Here’s the official job description and link to apply!

But you’re reading this on Medium, so you’re probably looking for the deeper dive on what this role is, why it’s cool, and who we’re looking for.

What this role is

The Medium community is diverse, curious, vibrant, weird, creative — this role will help writers share their stories with the right audience. At Medium, our goal is to deepen our collective understanding of the world through the power of writing; this role will help make that happen for writers of all types.

Let’s start by defining the word “community” in the context of this role. When we refer to the Medium community, that includes our readers, writers, and editors. This role is primarily focused on the writer and editor side:

You’ll serve as Medium’s liaison to writers and editors by managing writer and community programs, overseeing off-platform Medium communities, sharing information, and fostering engagement on and off Medium.

But the unique thing about Medium’s definition of “writers” is how expansive and encompassing it is. You don’t have to hold the job title of writer to write on Medium, and lots of folks who write on Medium don’t.

Who are Medium writers, then? They’re designers sharing case studies, retirees sharing memoir stories, programmers sharing tutorials, academics sharing research, comedians sharing satire on the state of the world, lawyers sharing political analysis, new moms sharing parenting advice, film fans sharing interviews, travelers sharing city guides. (Really — I just got all those examples from a quick scroll of my Medium home feed.)

Medium is the place where anyone can share their expertise and lived experience with the world. The Medium version of a story is the first-hand, direct-from-the-source account, rooted in personal lived expertise. As the community manager, you’ll be connecting with and supporting writers of all kinds to help them share the story that only they can share. It is one of the coolest parts of the job.

Why this role is cool

On that note, here are a few more reasons why I’m excited about this job.

It’s a strategic role that’s focused on growing our writer community. I think a bad version of community manager jobs is one that’s not tied to strategy. It’s starting up conversations for the sake of “engagement”, endless moderation of random Facebook groups, trying to appease a small vocal minority. This role is not that. We’re aiming for community-led growth vs. community value extraction (see: The Secret Ingredient That Powers Community-Led Growth).

This role is about community autonomy, not control. From A starter kit for building community strategy: Community managers design spaces, then get out of the way to allow their community to grow, play, lead, and improve. We want to empower our smart, creative community of writers to succeed — and provide support, guidance, and encouragement along the way.

You’ll manage programs and build ones from scratch. We want to have a direct space to talk to and get feedback from all types of writers and editors across our platform; you’ll build it. You’ll also collaborate with our content, marketing, curation, and product teams to build programs and systems that help writers succeed, and to maintain existing programs.

You’ll spend a lot of time talking to writers, in conversations both on and off Medium. You’ll help potential new writers understand whether Medium is a good fit for the stories they want to tell, you’ll share product updates to the people who need to know about them. Our first operating principle is humans first, and you’ll learn a lot about all the humans that make up our community.

You’ll grow something meaningful and join Medium at a really good time. Our VP of design wrote in a Medium story recently:

During my six months at Medium so far, what has become clear to me are our tremendous opportunities for growth. We spent the past two years stabilizing our business and reaching profitability, and our team is now ready to take on more creative risks and holistic systems changes that shape how Medium fundamentally works. In other words: our footing is sound; what’s next?

With this stability comes space for experimentation and a focus on continuing momentum. We have big ambitions and a clear goal of building the best place to read and write on the internet.

Speaking of humans, you’ll work with really good ones. Speaking from my personal experience, working at Medium means working alongside the smartest, kindest people out there. Plus you get the flexibility of a remote role, but we also meet up twice a year IRL! Here’s a 2024 recap to give you a sense of the vibe of our offsites — they’re a lot of work, but a lot of fun too.

Who we’re looking for

I start every interview with the same question: Why Medium?. We’re looking for someone with a good answer. Mission alignment is an important part of our recruitment process; we’re trying to build a better internet, and a place where diverse voices are valued and elevated.

Ideally, you have experience building and managing community spaces, preferably online. We’d love to recruit someone from the Medium writer community for this role, but it’s not a dealbreaker if your experience is focused elsewhere. Medium is a community of sub-communities of every possible topic, and so experience with similar spaces is a plus (reddit, Discord, tumblr, etc.).

What else? You’re a good writer, clear communicator, structured thinker. You like to help others succeed. You lead with enthusiasm and kindness and a genuine passion for Medium, both as a product and a platform.

If this sounds like you, please apply, we’re looking to hire for this role very soon!