YC Jobs Lookup: Y Combinator Startup Jobs Scraper

You give this actor a list of role categories — software engineer, designer, product manager, and so on. For each one, it reads Y Combinator's own WorkAtAStartup job board — the site every YC-backed company posts its openings to — and returns every open posting in that category: title, company, YC batch, location, salary if listed, and the apply link, one row per posting. No login, no headless browser: the board's own page ships the job list as a JSON payload alongside the HTML, and this actor reads that directly. Optional filters narrow results by job title, hiring location, or remote-only, and a delta mode returns only postings that appeared since your last run.

Who it's for

Anyone building a YC-company lead list or candidate pipeline without clicking through 30 postings by hand — recruiters sourcing at funded startups, founders scouting who's hiring (and who might be a customer), and investors or analysts tracking hiring velocity across the YC portfolio as a signal. It also suits an outbound list: "every YC startup currently hiring a product manager" is a company list with a reason to reach out attached. Pricing is pay-per-event and per-posting: a fraction of a cent per returned row, and nothing for a role category with no open postings, so watching a quiet category costs you next to nothing.

Why this one

• Reads WorkAtAStartup's own job data, not a scrape of rendered text. The board serves its job list as a JSON payload embedded in the page (an Inertia.js data-page attribute) — this actor parses that directly, so results don't depend on brittle CSS selectors that break on a redesign.
• You pay per posting returned, not per search. A role category with 30 open postings and one with 2 both bill only for the postings actually delivered — a category with none is a free miss.
• Honest about being a preview, not the whole board. WorkAtAStartup's logged-out view caps each role category at roughly 25-30 postings with no further pagination — see "Tips" below for what that means and doesn't mean.
• A delta mode for watching a category over time. Turn on onlyNewSinceLastRun, put the actor on a schedule, and every run after the first returns only postings you haven't seen — a quiet week still gets a row, so you can tell "nothing new" from "the run broke."

What you get

One row per matching job posting by default (toggle "One row per job posting" off in the Input tab to get one row per role category instead, with the full list nested in jobs). Every row carries these fields, whether or not you've turned on filters or delta mode — the columns never move:

Field	Type / format	Description
query	text	The role category you passed in, unchanged.
found	boolean	true if the category matched at least one open posting, false otherwise.
status	text	OK or NOT_FOUND (no postings currently match this role category).
role	text	The role category actually searched (normalized to WorkAtAStartup's slug format).
jobCount	number	How many postings matched, after your filters (and after delta filtering, if onlyNewSinceLastRun is on).
totalJobCount	number	How many postings WorkAtAStartup returned for this role before any filtering — lets you see what a filter dropped.
newJobs	number	How many postings are new since your last scheduled run. Empty unless onlyNewSinceLastRun is on.
firstRun	boolean	true if this was the baseline run for this watchlist. Empty unless onlyNewSinceLastRun is on.
jobs	array	The full list of matching postings, each with the fields below. Present in every row; it's what gets expanded into separate rows in "one row per posting" mode.
jobId	text	WorkAtAStartup's own posting ID.
title	text	Job title.
company	text	Hiring company.
companyBatch	text	The company's YC batch, e.g. W26, S14.
companySlug	text	The company's WorkAtAStartup slug.
companyOneLiner	text	The company's one-line description, as listed on its profile.
jobType	text	Employment type, e.g. Fulltime.
roleType	text	WorkAtAStartup's own sub-type for the role, e.g. Full stack, UI / UX.
location	text	Where the role is based, as listed — "Remote", a city, or several cities joined by /.
remote	boolean	true if location reads as remote.
salaryText	text	The salary range as listed (prose, e.g. "$124K - $188K CAD") — not every posting lists one.
applyUrl	link	Link to apply (routes through YC's own sign-up flow).
companyLastActiveAt	text	How recently the company was last active on Bookface (YC's internal network) — a rough proxy for how actively they're checking applications, not the posting's own age.
scrapedAt	date (ISO)	When this actor fetched the row.

A role category with no current matches still comes back as one row with found: false, and that row is never charged.

Price

$1 per 1,000 job postings, plus a $0.00005 start fee. Misses (found:false) are never charged.

1,000 postings through this actor: ~$1 (plus a $0.00005 actor-start charge), less on a paid Apify plan. A role category with zero open postings is never billed — you only pay for postings actually delivered.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the roles field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~yc-jobs-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"roles":["software-engineer"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Paste one role category per line: software-engineer, designer, recruiting, science, product-manager, operations, sales-manager, marketing, legal, or finance — these are WorkAtAStartup's own top-level categories. Each one is matched against that category's job board.

To narrow the postings you get back, open the 🎯 Job filters section of the Input tab. All of these are optional and combine with AND across fields, OR within a field:

Input	What it does
titleKeywords	Keep only postings whose title contains at least one of these — ["backend","platform"]. Recommended for a broad category like software-engineer.
excludeTitleKeywords	Drop postings whose title contains one of these — ["intern","unpaid"]. Applied after titleKeywords.
locations	Keep only postings whose location field contains one of these — ["San Francisco","New York"]. Drops postings with no location listed at all — leave empty to keep them.
remoteOnly	Keep only postings whose location reads as remote. Most WorkAtAStartup roles are on-site or hybrid, so this usually removes rows.

Leave every filter empty and you get every posting WorkAtAStartup returned for that role category, exactly as before filters existed. jobCount (matched) and totalJobCount (before filtering) both come back on every row, so a filtered result is never ambiguous.

For a standing watchlist, turn on onlyNewSinceLastRun in the 🔁 Watch for new postings section and put the actor on a schedule. The first run baselines (returns everything matching your filters, firstRun: true); every run after that returns only postings it hasn't shown you before, counted in newJobs. A quiet run still returns a row per role category (jobCount: 0, newJobs: 0) so you can tell "nothing new" from "the run failed."

Input

{
  "roles": [
    "software-engineer"
  ]
}

One per line. Matched against WorkAtAStartup's own role categories: software-engineer, designer, recruiting, science, product-manager, operations, sales-manager, marketing, legal, finance. Add a "Job title must contain" filter below for tighter results.

Sample output

One row per posting (default view). From a live run against roles: ["software-engineer"]:

query	found	status	role	jobCount	totalJobCount	newJobs	firstRun	jobId	title	company	companyBatch	companySlug	companyOneLiner	jobType	roleType	location	remote	salaryText	applyUrl	companyLastActiveAt	scrapedAt
software-engineer	true	OK	software-engineer	30	30			93806	Senior Software Developer	Hive	S14	hive	Marketing automation for event promoters (email, sms, ads, CRM)	Fulltime	Full stack	Remote	true	$124K - $188K CAD	https://account.ycombinator.com/authenticate?continue=...		2026-09-08T01:17:10.000Z

(This table is hand-inserted from the pre-publish live verification run — it will be replaced by a real generated sample the first time a canary task runs against this actor.)

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~yc-jobs-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"roles":["software-engineer"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~yc-jobs-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"roles":["software-engineer"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~yc-jobs-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"roles":["{{role category}}"]}, mapping the row's role category into the roles array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "YC Jobs Lookup | Apify" — the agent will find and run this actor.

Tips

• Add a titleKeywords filter on broad categories. software-engineer is WorkAtAStartup's default/largest category and returns a wide mix of seniorities and specializations — narrow it to the titles you actually want.
• This is a preview, not the whole board. WorkAtAStartup's logged-out job pages return roughly 25-30 postings per role category with no pagination in the anonymous view — verified live on two categories (30 for software-engineer, 25 for designer). A YC-backed company hiring in a category isn't guaranteed to appear if that category's preview page is full; there is no official count of how many postings exist beyond what the preview returns.
• salaryText and companyBatch aren't always present. Not every posting lists a salary range, and pre-seed or very early-batch companies sometimes have a sparser profile.
• No posting date is available. WorkAtAStartup's public payload carries companyLastActiveAt (the company's last activity on Bookface, YC's internal network) but no per-posting publish date — so this actor doesn't offer a postedAfter filter or a postedAt column. See the FAQ.

vs. alternatives

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor (yc-jobs-lookup)	$0.001 per posting returned (FREE tier), $0.00005 actor start, nothing for a category with no matches	Every open posting WorkAtAStartup's public board shows for a role category — title, company, YC batch, location, salary if listed, apply link — filtered by title, location, or remote, with onlyNewSinceLastRun for deltas	Reads the same logged-out preview a browser sees: roughly 25-30 postings per category, no full-board count, no posting date.
parsebird/yc-jobs-scraper	Pricing not disclosed publicly; comparable job-scraper actors in this niche range $0.05-$2.50 per 1,000 results	The established incumbent for this niche — 118 users in the last 30 days, 4.06 rating (3 reviews)	If you already use it and it fits your workflow, there's no urgent reason to switch. This one is per-posting priced and documents its own preview-cap limitation up front.
Doing it yourself	Your time + finding and parsing the Inertia data-page JSON payload, handling role-slug routing, and re-checking the page structure as WorkAtAStartup changes its frontend	The same data	This actor's parsing, filters, delta mode, and retry handling are the maintenance burden it absorbs.

Prices for third-party tools are their published list prices (where disclosed) as of September 2026 and are not tracked here — check the vendor before relying on the comparison.

FAQ

Why does found say false, or a row come back empty? The role category currently has zero open postings in WorkAtAStartup's public view (status: NOT_FOUND). Try a different category, or check the site directly — a category can also be temporarily empty between hiring waves.

Was I charged for that row? Only for postings actually returned — jobCount postings per role category, at the per-posting price. A category matching zero postings is free.

I got charged for a role category that returned jobCount: 0 — why? That can only happen with filters or delta mode: WorkAtAStartup returned postings (totalJobCount > 0), but your titleKeywords/locations/remoteOnly filtered all of them out, or none were new since your last delta run. Zero rows means zero charge either way — this question only applies to the "one row per role category" display mode, where a category still gets a summary row even when its jobs list is empty.

Why is there no postedAt or salary-as-a-number field? WorkAtAStartup's public job payload doesn't include either. The only date-like field it exposes is companyLastActiveAt (the company's own last activity, not the posting's age), and salary is a prose range (salaryText) rather than min/max numbers — some postings omit it entirely. Rather than fabricate a value the source doesn't provide, both are left out or reported as-is: see docs/ats-filters.md's "Auditing a port" rule, which this actor follows even though it isn't an ATS actor.

Does this return every YC startup's job, or just a sample? A sample. This reads the same logged-out preview page a browser without a WorkAtAStartup account sees, capped at roughly 25-30 postings per role category with no further pages available. It's current and accurate for what it shows, but it isn't a claim of full board coverage.

How does the delta / "new since last run" state work, and can I reset it? It lives in a named key-value store, yc-jobs-lookup-state, inside your own Apify account. Delete that store to reset every watchlist. Changing your filters also starts a fresh watchlist automatically, since filter values are part of what identifies a given seen-list.

Does this actor hit rate limits or need a proxy? It calls WorkAtAStartup's own public pages once per role category, through Apify's default proxy, with its own timeout and retry handling. No special proxy configuration is required.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes — it's registered with the Apify MCP server. See "Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent" above.

Related actors

• Greenhouse Jobs Lookup — the same per-company job-board pattern for any company hiring on Greenhouse, YC-backed or not.
• ATS Jobs Unified Lookup — checks a company against six different ATS platforms at once, including a hiring-signal mode.
• RemoteOK Jobs Lookup — the same per-posting pricing model for RemoteOK's broader, non-YC-specific remote job feed.