Search Hacker News "Who is hiring?" threads by keyword with the free Algolia API

Disclosure: I built the Apify Actor linked at the end and charge per result. The raw endpoints below are free and need no key.

Every month a "Who is hiring?" thread appears on Hacker News, with hundreds of job comments. Algolia's public HN API lets you search inside one.

1. Find the latest thread

curl -s "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?query=%22Ask%20HN%3A%20Who%20is%20hiring%22&tags=story,author_whoishiring&hitsPerPage=3"

Checked 2026-10-31: the newest hit was "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)", objectID 49922569.

2. Search its comments

curl -s "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=comment,story_49922569&query=remote%20python&hitsPerPage=20"

Each hit has comment_text (HTML), author, created_at and objectID.

Gotchas

• Replace the story id with the one from step 1 each month.
• comment_text is HTML; strip tags before display.
• Use &page=1, 2... to paginate.

Hosted version

If you'd rather not maintain it, I packaged this (plus story and comment search) as an Apify Actor, pay per event, no subscription: https://apify.com/northgrid-data/hacker-news-search-threads-hiring

Feedback welcome in the Actor's issues.