Huntr empowers 400,000 job seekers with scalable, AI-powered search with MongoDB

THE CHALLENGE

Finding new ways to improve job search functionalities for Huntr

Today’s job seekers often feel like commodities rather than people. Huntr has a mission to put job seekers first by building tools that help them find employment on their own terms. Since it was founded in 2017, Huntr—an AI-powered job search management platform—has grown to serve 400,000 customers across 190 countries, with more than 14 million jobs stored on its platform, all supported by a lean team.

Search is the number one function of Huntr’s website, and the company initially relied on Elasticsearch as a bolt-on search engine alongside MongoDB Atlas as its primary data store. However, the team encountered performance and stability issues while working with Elasticsearch. The footprint of the tool was also considered bloated, and the architecture required more attention than the company’s three-person engineering team could give.

After the emergence of generative AI (gen AI), Huntr saw an opportunity to transform its platform. This shift intensified the company’s need for a database solution that could not only handle its growing search requirements but also support the development of its own advanced AI features.

OUR SOLUTION

Using MongoDB Atlas to build AI-powered job search for 400,000 users

Huntr migrated its search functionalities from Elasticsearch to MongoDB Atlas Search, simplifying the company’s tech stack and gaining the flexibility needed to quickly iterate and develop new features. The company uses MongoDB Atlas Search to provide fuzzy keyword search across job descriptions and titles, enabling users to rapidly locate specific opportunities in their application history.

“I consider MongoDB to be a fourth member of our engineering team,” said Trevor McCann, Senior Software Engineer at Huntr. “We don’t need a DevOps person dedicated to running our database when we have MongoDB Atlas in front of us.”

Huntr is helping job seekers find opportunities in their area using MongoDB Atlas’s geospatial search capability. Users can search millions of job records by location, with options for both city name searches and proximity-based results that include nearby suburbs and surrounding areas.

Huntr also uses this technology to power dynamic job boards for over 150 major cities worldwide. The company automatically generates pages that display certain roles, such as “software jobs in San Francisco,” by identifying recent job postings in that geographical area.

OUTCOME

Maintaining independence while scaling globally

With MongoDB Atlas as its foundation, Huntr continues to grow while maintaining its commitment to putting job seekers first. Most recently, Huntr introduced AI Resume Review, giving job seekers instant, AI driven feedback to strengthen their resumes. Looking forward, the company is preparing to implement MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to power its next generation of AI features.

“Our mission is to be the top place for job seekers to use AI to support their search,” says Sam Wright, Head of Operations and Partnerships at Huntr. “We’re planning to use MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to make more sense out of the data. This will create real actionable insights for job seekers—ultimately helping someone land a job faster than they would have otherwise.”

Explore MongoDB Atlas to see how you can transform your application’s search and AI capabilities.