Jobs.ac.uk Academic Jobs Scraper

Scrape jobs.ac.uk — the UK's leading job board for academic, research, and higher-education careers. Search by keyword and location, browse by 20 academic and 19 professional-services disciplines, filter by contract type, hours, salary band, workplace and employer sector, or fetch specific job posting URLs directly. HTTP-only against public jobs.ac.uk pages. No auth, no proxy, no cookies.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (keyword / location / discipline / filter browsing) and byUrls (fetch specific job posting URLs)
• Full discipline coverage: 20 academic subject areas (Biological Sciences, Engineering, Law, Psychology, etc.), 89 narrower academic sub-disciplines (e.g. Cyber Security, Software Engineering), and 19 professional-services job families (IT Services, HR, Estates & Facilities, etc.)
• Postgraduate study listings: filter to Masters/PhD opportunities by qualification type and funding eligibility
• Rich filters: hours (full/part-time), contract type, workplace (remote/hybrid/on-site), 13 salary bands, employer sector, search radius
• Full job descriptions: optionally visits each job's detail page for the complete description, structured salary, employment type and closing date
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per job

• title, jobUrl, jobReference (jobs.ac.uk advert code, e.g. DSI921)
• employer, employerLogoUrl, employerWebsite
• department (when advertised)
• location, locationCity, locationRegion, locationCountry
• salaryRaw (as advertised), salaryAmount, salaryCurrency, salaryPeriod
• employmentTypes[] (e.g. Full Time, Fixed-Term/Contract)
• description (full plain-text job description)
• datePosted, closingDate — ISO 8601
• recordType: "job", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byUrls
keywords	string	research	Free-text search terms
location	string	–	UK town/city/postcode/country (advisory text match against each job's advertised location; jobs.ac.uk ignores this server-side without a browser-resolved place, see FAQ)
distanceMiles	select	0	Search radius around location (advisory only, see FAQ)
locationFacet	string	–	A single real, working jobs.ac.uk location filter — continent/country/UK nation/UK county (e.g. Scotland, Greater London, Oxfordshire); auto-slugified from free text
sortOrder	select	relevance	relevance / datePlaced / closingDate
academicDisciplines	array (enum)	–	20 academic subject areas
academicSubDisciplines	array (enum)	–	89 narrower academic sub-fields (e.g. Cyber Security, Software Engineering) — independent of academicDisciplines, can combine or be used alone
nonAcademicDisciplines	array (enum)	–	19 professional-services job families
jobTypes	array (enum)	–	masters / phds — restrict to postgraduate study
hoursTypes	array (enum)	–	full-time / part-time
contractTypes	array (enum)	–	permanent / fixed-term-contract / temporary
workplaceTypes	array (enum)	–	hybrid / remote / on-site
salaryBands	array (enum)	–	13 GBP salary bands
employerSectors	array (enum)	–	6 employer types
qualificationTypes	array (enum)	–	PhD qualification type (postgrad listings)
fundingTypes	array (enum)	–	PhD funding eligibility (postgrad listings)
jobUrls	array	–	Direct job URLs (mode=byUrls)
fetchFullDescription	bool	true	Visit detail page for full description/salary/dates
maxItems	int	25	Hard cap (1–1000)

Example: computer science jobs in London, full-time & permanent

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keywords": "lecturer",
  "location": "London",
  "distanceMiles": 20,
  "academicDisciplines": ["computer-sciences"],
  "hoursTypes": ["full-time"],
  "contractTypes": ["permanent"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: funded PhD studentships for UK students

{
  "mode": "search",
  "jobTypes": ["phds"],
  "fundingTypes": ["uk-students"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: fetch specific job postings

{
  "mode": "byUrls",
  "jobUrls": ["https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSI921/senior-statistical-analyst"]
}

Use cases

• HE recruitment intelligence — track hiring trends across UK universities and research institutes
• Academic job alerts — build a custom feed filtered by discipline/salary/contract type
• PhD/Masters discovery — surface funded postgraduate opportunities by subject and funding type
• Salary benchmarking — aggregate advertised salary bands by discipline or sector
• Employer research — enumerate all current openings at a specific university or research body

FAQ

Does this require a jobs.ac.uk account? No — all listings and job detail pages scraped are publicly accessible without login.

Why are some fields (like department) missing on some jobs? Not every advertiser fills in every field (e.g. department is often left blank for external/company employers). Empty fields are omitted rather than returned as null.

What's the difference between academicDisciplines and nonAcademicDisciplines? jobs.ac.uk splits its taxonomy into academic subject areas (used for lecturer/researcher roles) and professional-services job families (used for university administration, IT, HR, estates, etc. roles).

How do I get funded PhD listings only? Set jobTypes: ["phds"] and optionally fundingTypes to restrict by student eligibility (UK/EU/international/self-funded).

Can I combine multiple filters? Yes — all filters combine with AND logic, matching jobs.ac.uk's own faceted search.

Why doesn't location/distanceMiles actually restrict results? jobs.ac.uk's own location/distance query parameters only take effect when location is resolved through a browser-side Google Places autocomplete widget (not available to a server-side scraper) — verified live: the site's own result count is identical with and without them. This actor applies location as an advisory case-insensitive text match against each job's advertised location instead. For a filter that actually changes which jobs the server returns, use locationFacet (e.g. Scotland, Greater London) — a genuine jobs.ac.uk facet, confirmed live to change the result count. Only pass one locationFacet value per run: jobs.ac.uk ANDs multiple location facets together, and since a job only has one location, combining two different regions always yields 0 results.

How fresh is the data? jobs.ac.uk lists new roles daily; the datePosted and closingDate fields (from each job's detail page) reflect the advertiser's own dates.