01126 alumni founders
77
companies hiring
6,184
roles across them
Largest current destinations
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BUILDLIST
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August 2026 Report
Current hiring data by role, funding stage, location, salary, and founder network.
Data coverage
Active openings from tracked company career pages, refreshed throughout the day. Updated 8/31/2026.
Open roles
38,318
Current openings
Hiring companies
621
Of 784 tracked
Salary coverage
58%
22,412 posted ranges
Top-five concentration
23%
Share of all live roles
01
Role mix
Physical build, test, production, and supply-chain roles account for 36% of openings, or 1.8× the share of software and AI roles.
Physical build, test, production, & supply chain
36%
Software, data, AI, & autonomy
20%
1.8×
ratio of physical-build roles to software and AI roles
“Physical build” combines electrical and firmware, mechanical systems, manufacturing and production, test and reliability, and supply chain. Product and program roles are excluded from both sides.
02
Funding stage
Series C+ companies account for 24× as many openings as seed companies. The median hiring Series C+ company lists 38 roles, compared with 6 at seed.
| Stage | Raw job share | Tracked | Hiring | Hiring rate | Median live roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 3% | 187 | 110 | 59% | 6 |
| Series A | 5% | 129 | 105 | 81% | 14 |
| Series B | 7% | 119 | 108 | 91% | 20.5 |
| Series C+ | 64% | 288 |
03
Location
Each card shows the sector most concentrated in that market. A 2.0× reading means the local share is twice the overall BuildList share.
04
Salaries
The raw median is $175k. The index compares each role family with its market-wide median and weights each represented role family equally.
SF Bay Area
8 roles · n=6,624
NYC
8 roles · n=2,616
Austin
5 roles · n=334
Seattle
6 roles · n=1,221
Remote
05
Founder networks
Networks are ranked by the number of alumni-founded companies with current openings. Total job count breaks ties.
Browse current openings or download the report data.
Methodology
Active openings come directly from company applicant-tracking systems. Generic talent-pipeline posts are removed. Counts are not deduplicated across companies because each row is a distinct employer opening.
BuildList tracks a curated set of frontier-tech companies. Inactive companies stay in the historical directory but are excluded from the company-weighted stage denominator.
A multi-location job contributes to each listed metro. Location specialization compares shares within one place, where the numerator and denominator use the same multi-location treatment.
Salary figures use the midpoint of disclosed base-pay ranges normalized to annual USD. Equity and bonus are excluded, and disclosure is shaped by pay-transparency laws.
Funding stage is the company’s latest canonical stage. Hiring rate is the share of tracked active companies at that stage with at least one current opening.
Founder links use structured prior-employment histories and durable founder identities. Network results represent the founders with available work-history data.
Scope and caveats
BuildList tracks a curated set of frontier-tech companies. The index covers current openings, not hires or headcount growth. The five largest employers account for 23% of all openings.
Coverage
The index does not represent the full frontier-tech market.
| 268 |
| 93% |
| 38 |
| Public | 20% | 25 | 22 | 88% | 137 |
|---|
Hiring rate
Share of tracked active companies with at least one current opening.
Median openings
Median number of current roles among companies that are hiring.
2,699 roles
Aerospace
Across 12 employers in this slice
Remote availability by role
11%
of openings include a remote location. Availability varies by role.
7 roles · n=2,218
Washington, D.C.
6 roles · n=826
AI Research
8 roles · n=1,626
Compute & Semiconductors
11 roles · n=2,185
AI App
7 roles · n=2,956
Transportation
5 roles · n=782
Robotics
4 roles · n=337
Defense
4 roles · n=1,287
100 is the median for the same roles across the full sample. Published cross-cuts require at least 30 salary-bearing openings; this report then requires at least four role families and 250 observations. The adjustment does not control for seniority, company, equity, or cost of living.
Explore salary ranges →36
companies hiring
5,314
roles across them
Largest current destinations
32
companies hiring
1,047
roles across them
Largest current destinations
28
companies hiring
3,241
roles across them
Largest current destinations
23
companies hiring
601
roles across them
Largest current destinations
Destinations can appear under more than one alumni network, so job totals are not additive. The network dataset currently has qualifying prior-employment history for 857 of 1,846 founders.
Explore the founder graph →Openings
Counts exclude applications, filled roles, layoffs, and net headcount changes.
Analysis
Opening-weighted, company-weighted, and role-adjusted measures are identified where used.