Writing search queries that find the right developers

Describe the work, not the title

Titles vary wildly between companies; the work does not. A query that describes the technology and the kind of problems solved will outperform one built around a job title.

• Name the core stack: languages, frameworks, infrastructure.
• Describe the domain: payments, real-time systems, developer tools, machine learning.
• Mention signals that matter to you, like open-source contributions in a specific ecosystem.

Iterate in small steps

Change one thing at a time and watch how the matched repositories shift. If a query returns developers whose matched work is adjacent but wrong, tighten the domain language before touching anything else.

When a query is producing good results, save it so you can rerun it later instead of reconstructing it from memory. Saved searches are also available through the API.