How long do job postings stay up? We tracked 39,060 data jobs
We read data job postings straight from employers’ own hiring systems every day, so we know the day each one appeared and the day it came down. Of the 39,060 US data jobs we started tracking this year, half were still up on day 59. One in 5 was still up after six months.
- Day 59
- Half of the postings had come down by then
- 15%
- came down within a week
- 20%
- were still up after six months
Most postings stay up for weeks, and a long tail stays up for months
Read the line from the left. Every posting starts at 100%, and the line drops each time one comes down. It falls fastest in the first month, then flattens: by day 90, 39% were still listed.
Why the usual answer is too short
Most answers to this question look only at postings that have already closed. Do that with our data and the typical posting lasts 24 days. But 19,226 of the postings we tracked had not come down yet, and they are the ones that stay up longest. Counting them until today gives a very different number.
Machine learning and AI engineer jobs stay up longest
- Machine learning and AI engineer
- Data engineer
- Data scientist
- Data analyst
- Analytics engineer
A machine learning or AI engineer posting stays up about twice as long as any other data role: half had come down only by day 132, and 39% were still up at six months. That fits roles that take longer to fill, and postings kept open all year for more than one hire. Analytics engineer postings come down fastest.
Remote jobs come down first
Half of remote postings were down by day 56, against day 73 for on-site ones. After six months, 31% of on-site postings were still up and only 16% of remote ones. Remote openings draw applicants from the whole country, which is the likeliest reason they close sooner.
How unusual is the posting you’re looking at?
Pick the role and drag to the posting’s age.
57% of the data jobs we tracked were still up on day 45. The other 43% had already come down.
What a posting’s age should change
Under a month old: apply. Two out of three postings are still up at day 30.
Two to three months: still worth applying, but check the posting is still on the employer’s own careers site first. Job boards often keep copies up after the employer takes the original down, and their “posted” dates get reset, so a two-month-old job can look new. Paste any link into Check a job to see when it really appeared.
Past six months: it is in the slowest fifth. That can still be a real role, especially in machine learning, but it is worth asking a recruiter whether it is open before you spend an evening on it. Our guide on telling if a posting is real and still open has the other checks.
How we counted
We read each employer’s hiring system directly (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever and others) and record the day a posting first appears. These are 39,060 US postings for data analysts, analytics engineers, data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning and AI engineers, first seen between 1 April and 4 November 2026.
A posting counts as down when the employer closed it, it disappeared from their board, or we had not seen it for 14 days. Coming down is not always a hire: some roles are cancelled or reposted. Postings still up are counted until today rather than left out (a Kaplan–Meier estimate), which is why our median is longer than one taken over closed postings alone.
Age is counted from when we first saw a posting, so for an employer we started reading recently, a posting can be older than we can tell. The figures here change as more postings close; we update the post when they move.