HN Who Is Hiring Scraper

Turn Hacker News monthly hiring threads into structured JSON. This Apify Actor parses Ask HN: Who is hiring? threads — one of the highest-signal tech job feeds on the internet — into clean records with company, role, remote policy, salary hints, tech stack, apply URLs, and HN comment links.

No browser. No login. Uses the public Hacker News Firebase API.

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Why teams use this Actor

Pain point	What you get
Hundreds of unstructured HN comments	Parsed company, role, location, remote, salary
Manual copy-paste every month	One API call → JSON / CSV / Excel
Duplicate alerts on re-runs	onlyNewJobs deduplication via KVS cache
Hard to filter by stack	techStack + searchKeyword filters

Built for monthly pipelines — recruiters, founders, and engineers who watch the HN hiring thread but don't want to read 300+ comments by hand.

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Example input

{
  "months": 1,
  "maxItems": 200,
  "searchKeyword": "python",
  "remoteOnly": true,
  "techStack": ["python"],
  "onlyNewJobs": true
}

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Example output

Real record from the July 2026 thread:

{
  "jobId": "hn:48775598",
  "company": "Confido",
  "role": "Forward Deployed Engineer",
  "location": "$200-270k BASE",
  "remote": null,
  "salary": "$200 - $270k",
  "techStack": ["Python", "TypeScript", "Rails", "AWS"],
  "applyUrl": "https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/confido/e3d42ff2-4ab4-4469-9091-d249b2c7519d",
  "email": null,
  "postedAt": "2026-07-03T14:36:13Z",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48775598",
  "threadTitle": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2026)",
  "sourceAttribution": "Hacker News",
  "sourceSiteUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-22T10:03:39Z"
}

Every record includes jobId (hn:{commentId}) for stable deduplication across scheduled runs.

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Output fields

Field	Description
company / role / location	Parsed from the comment header line
remote	Remote, Hybrid, or Onsite when detected
salary	Salary text when mentioned (best-effort parse)
techStack	Detected technologies (Python, Rust, React, AWS, …)
applyUrl	First URL in the posting
email	Contact email when present
hnUrl	Link back to the original HN comment
jobId	Stable ID for onlyNewJobs (hn:{commentId})
sourceAttribution	"Hacker News"
sourceSiteUrl	https://news.ycombinator.com

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Automate without code (n8n · Make · Zapier)

HN publishes a new Who is Hiring thread about once per month. Typical no-code flow:

Schedule (2nd of month, 9 AM)
    → Run HN Who Is Hiring Scraper (onlyNewJobs: true)
    → If new jobs found
        → Send to Slack / Google Sheets / Email

Why onlyNewJobs matters: without it, every monthly run re-sends the same 200 postings. With it, you only get comments you haven't seen before.

n8n workflow (import-ready)

Download workflows/n8n-monthly-hn-jobs-slack.json and import into n8n.

Step	Node	Settings
1	Schedule Trigger	Cron: 0 9 2 * * (2nd of month, 9 AM)
2	Apify → Run Actor	novel_virginiacreeper/hn-who-is-hiring-scraper
3	Apify → Get Dataset Items	Use defaultDatasetId from step 2
4	Slack	Post company, role, stack, apply URL, HN link

Make / Zapier

Tool	What to do
Make	Apify Watch Actor Runs → Iterator → Add Row / Send Message
Zapier	Apify integration → Filter (itemCount > 0) → Slack / Gmail

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Monthly alert workflow (Apify Schedule)

Recommended setup on Apify:

1. Schedule this Actor for the 2nd of each month (after the thread is live)
2. Enable onlyNewJobs: true
3. Pipe results to Slack / Google Sheets / email via n8n or Make

Example schedule input:

{
  "months": 1,
  "maxItems": 200,
  "onlyNewJobs": true
}

First run note: the first run with onlyNewJobs: true returns all scraped jobs (empty cache). Every subsequent run returns only new comment IDs.

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Input parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
months	1	Recent monthly threads to parse (1–24)
threadId	—	Optional specific HN thread item ID
maxItems	200	Max postings to return
searchKeyword	—	Text filter
remoteOnly	false	Remote postings only
techStack	[]	Required technologies
onlyNewJobs	false	Skip previously seen comment IDs

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Data source & fair use

• Data comes from public HN comments via the official Firebase API
• Each record includes a link back to the original HN comment (hnUrl)
• Use reasonable maxItems; do not republish personal emails beyond the listing context
• HN threads are community content — respect Hacker News guidelines

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Pricing

Pay per event: ~$5 per 1,000 results (+ small start fee). You only pay when the Actor runs and returns data.

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Keywords: Hacker News jobs, Who is Hiring scraper, HN hiring API, monthly tech jobs, startup jobs, remote jobs HN, n8n job alerts, only new jobs