DEV Community: Level

Three questions to ask an AI-rated job board (and the exact queries that answer them)

Level — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 02:02:12 +0000

Three questions to ask an AI-rated job board (and the exact queries that answer them)

Job boards answer "who is hiring" well and "what is the job, really" badly. Every AI job board we published on worked around that with a free read-only interface: Level exposes its catalog through a REST API and an MCP server, no key required. Here are the three questions worth asking first, with the queries and the numbers as of 22 September 2026.

1. Who is building AI, rather than using it?

The catalog rates every posting from Level 1 to Level 4 on how central AI is to the work, scored from the posting text alone:

Level	Score	Meaning	Live jobs (22 Sept 2026)
4	80-100	Build AI systems	3,539
3	60-79	Work with AI	6,574
2	40-59	Use AI as a tool	3,275
1	0-39	Work around AI	34,347

Query the top of the scale:

curl "https://jobsbylevel.com/api/v1/jobs?ai_level_min=4"

The interesting result is the shape, not the list: Level 4 is 3,539 of 47,735 tracked postings — about 7%. If your sourcing strategy assumes every company with "AI" in its pitch is hiring AI builders, this is the correction.

2. Which companies hire AI builders most consistently?

Sorting companies by the average AI score of their open roles is a better signal than headcount, because it does not reward a company for posting fifty Level 1 roles. Two MCP tools answer this directly: market_stats for the live distribution by AI level, remote share and top tools, and list_ai_native_companies for companies ranked by the average AI score of their open roles.

claude mcp add --transport http level-jobs https://jobsbylevel.com/mcp

Then ask the assistant the question instead of writing the aggregation yourself. On the REST side, /api/v1/jobs filters by company, so a single company can be checked without the ranking tool.

3. Is remote real in AI roles, or is it a filter that hides the work?

Remote flags on job boards are self-reported by the posting. Cross the flag with the AI level to see where remote actually concentrates:

curl "https://jobsbylevel.com/api/v1/jobs?ai_level_min=3&remote=1"

Then run the same query without remote=1, and once more with ai_level_max=2, and compare the counts. If remote only concentrates at Level 1 and 2, the roles you want are on-site more often than a remote-first filter suggests. The same comparison is available as a single market_stats call, which reports the remote share directly.

Two caveats worth repeating

Text, not reality. The level reflects what the posting says. Where a description avoids AI entirely, the score says AI is absent from the description — which is weaker than saying it is absent from the job.
Counts move. Postings are pulled from company applicant tracking systems every six hours, and a posting whose text changes is scored again. Re-run a query before quoting a number.

Keeping the link

Results carry a canonical jobsbylevel.com/jobs/<slug> URL — keep that link when you show results. Fair use sits around 60 requests per minute per IP, and the endpoints are read-only by design.

Full method: jobsbylevel.com/method · Level definitions: jobsbylevel.com/levels · Level is a free, AI-rated job board for people who want to know what the job really is.

How to tell if a job posting is really an AI job: a 4-level scale

Level — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 01:37:50 +0000

How to tell if a job posting is really an AI job: a 4-level scale

"AI Engineer", "AI Product Manager", "AI Solutions Specialist". Job titles with "AI" in them are multiplying, but the title alone tells you very little about the work. Here is the scale we use at Level to read a posting, with the number of live jobs at each level on 22 September 2026.

Level 4: Build AI systems (score 80-100)

Building AI systems is the job itself. Without AI, the role would not exist. Think model training, inference infrastructure, evaluation pipelines, applied research.

3,539 live jobs on 22 September 2026.

Level 3: Work with AI (score 60-79)

The daily work happens on or around AI systems, without necessarily building the model: integrating LLMs into a product, managing an AI roadmap, running evaluations. Remove AI and the job is hollow.

6,574 live jobs.

Level 2: Use AI as a tool (score 40-59)

An ordinary role whose duties require AI tools: coding with an assistant, writing or sourcing with one. The job exists without AI, but the posting expects you to use it.

3,275 live jobs.

Level 1: Work around AI (score 0-39)

The work itself involves no AI, or AI only appears as scenery, such as a company tagline. This is the largest group by far.

34,347 live jobs, 72% of the 47,735 tracked.

Three questions to ask of any posting

Does it name specific tools or models? Vague mentions of "AI-driven" rarely mean much. Named frameworks, model providers or evaluation tools usually do.
Which skills does it ask for? Retrieval pipelines, fine-tuning or prompt evaluation point to Level 3 or 4, even when the title never says "AI".
How much of the described work depends on them? One bullet out of fifteen is Level 2 at best. Most of the responsibilities is Level 3 or 4.

Method

Data: 47,735 live postings from 481 companies, read from their applicant tracking systems every six hours; counts as of 22 September 2026.
Scoring: 0-100 from the posting text only, never the company's marketing. A posting whose text changes is scored again.
Thresholds: fixed (80 / 60 / 40), so the share at each level moves with the market.
Limits: where a description says nothing about AI, the level says AI is absent from the description, which is weaker than saying it is absent from the job.

Full method and definitions: jobsbylevel.com/method

Only about 1 in 5 job postings at AI-era companies is really an AI job

Level — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 01:37:40 +0000

Only about 1 in 5 job postings at AI-era companies is really an AI job

"AI" is everywhere in hiring right now: in company taglines, in job titles, in the first line of almost every careers page. So we measured how much of the actual work involves AI.

On 22 September 2026, Level tracked 47,735 live job postings from 481 companies. Each one was scored from 0 to 100 on how central AI is to the daily work, then placed on a four-level scale.

What we found

Level	What it means	Live jobs	Share
Level 4	Building AI systems is the job	3,539	7.4%
Level 3	The daily work is on or around AI systems	6,574	13.8%
Level 2	An ordinary role that requires AI tools	3,275	6.9%
Level 1	The work itself involves no AI	34,347	72.0%

Only 10,113 postings (21.2%) reach Level 3 or 4, the jobs where removing AI would leave the role hollow. Nearly three in four postings describe work where AI is absent, or only appears as scenery.

Among those Level 1 postings, sales (5,823), operations (2,139) and marketing (1,266) are the largest groups. Many of them sit at companies that describe themselves as AI companies.

Why it matters if you are job hunting

A company that markets itself as "AI-first" can still be hiring mostly for roles that never touch a model. The reverse is also true: a posting that never says "AI" but asks for retrieval pipelines or evaluation work can be a real AI role.

If you want to move into AI work, the job title and the company's homepage are weak signals. The posting itself is the better one: which tools it names, which skills it asks for, and how much of the described work depends on them.

You can browse the four levels and filter by role or remote work on jobsbylevel.com/levels.

Method

Source: postings pulled directly from company applicant tracking systems every six hours. Expired postings are removed.
Scoring: each posting gets a 0-100 score from the text of the posting only (AI tools named, skills requested, share of the work that depends on them), never from the company's marketing.
Levels: fixed thresholds, not percentiles: 80+ is Level 4, 60-79 Level 3, 40-59 Level 2, below 40 Level 1.
Date: counts read from the database on 22 September 2026.
Limits: the level describes the posting, not the company or the person hired. A poorly written description can understate a role.

Full method: jobsbylevel.com/method

A free MCP server and REST API for AI-rated job listings (no key)

Level — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:35:59 +0000

A free MCP server and REST API for AI-rated job listings (no key)

If you want an assistant like Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to answer "which companies are hiring ML engineers remotely right now?", it needs live job data. Level exposes its catalog through a free MCP server and a plain REST API: no key, no authentication, read-only.

On 22 September 2026 the catalog held 47,735 live jobs from 481 companies, each rated from Level 1 to Level 4 on how central AI is to the work.

The MCP server

Endpoint: https://jobsbylevel.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, stateless).

Five tools:

search_jobs: text query, AI level range, remote, city, company (up to 20 results)
get_job: full detail of one listing by id or slug
market_stats: live distribution by AI level, remote share, top tools
list_ai_native_companies: companies ranked by the average AI score of their open roles
get_level_definitions: what each of the four levels means

Add it to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http level-jobs https://jobsbylevel.com/mcp

Or to Claude Desktop / Cursor config:

{ "mcpServers": { "level-jobs": { "url": "https://jobsbylevel.com/mcp" } } }

The REST API

Plain JSON, open CORS, same fields as the MCP tools.

curl "https://jobsbylevel.com/api/v1/jobs?query=machine%20learning&ai_level_min=3&remote=1"

Query parameters on /api/v1/jobs: query, ai_level_min, ai_level_max, remote, city, company, page. Results are capped at 20 per page. Details: /api/v1/jobs/<slug>.

Fair use is about 60 requests per minute per IP. Every result carries a canonical jobsbylevel.com/jobs/<slug> URL; please keep that link when you show results.

What the levels mean

Level	Score	Meaning	Live jobs (22 Sept 2026)
4	80-100	Build AI systems	3,539
3	60-79	Work with AI	6,574
2	40-59	Use AI as a tool	3,275
1	0-39	Work around AI	34,347

Method

Jobs are pulled from company applicant tracking systems every six hours and scored 0-100 from the posting text only. Fixed thresholds map the score to a level. Counts above were read from the database on 22 September 2026.

Docs: jobsbylevel.com/developers · Method: jobsbylevel.com/method