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How do I search for jobs with Codex CLI?

2026-09-28

To search for jobs with Codex CLI, add a job feed as an MCP server with codex mcp add, then ask Codex for roles in plain English. With Find your role first it's two commands, and Codex can then search about 250,000 open roles read directly from company career boards on Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby.

The rest of this is the setup in order, a few prompts that work, and what to expect from the results.

What you need before you start

• Codex CLI installed and signed in.
• A Find your role first subscription, $9 a month.
• An agent key from findyourrolefirst.click/account.

Sign in there with Google, subscribe, and create the key. That's it for accounts.

Step 1: put your key in an environment variable

Codex reads the bearer token from an environment variable, so the key stays out of the config file.

export JOBFEED_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY

If you want it to survive new terminal windows, add that line to your shell profile (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc).

Step 2: add the MCP server

codex mcp add jobfeed --url https://findyourrolefirst.click/mcp --bearer-token-env-var JOBFEED_API_KEY

This registers an HTTP MCP server called jobfeed and tells Codex to send the value of JOBFEED_API_KEY as the Authorization: Bearer header.

Step 3: ask Codex for roles

Start Codex and ask the way you'd ask a person:

Find machine learning engineer roles in London discovered in the last 24 hours.

Search for data analyst roles at Lever companies posted this week. Put them in a markdown table with company, title, location and apply link.

Find staff engineer roles that say remote. Open each posting and flag the ones that mention Go.

Codex calls search_jobs, which matches your query against the title, company and location. It can narrow by source (Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby), by publication date, or by the date the feed first discovered the role. Those two dates are tracked separately, which turns out to matter: a role can go live today on a board that still shows an older date, and "discovered since" catches it.

Reading the actual job description

The feed hands back short records: title, company, location, dates, the original posting link and the apply link. There's no full job description in the response.

That's on purpose. When Codex wants the details, it opens the original posting with its own web or browser tool. You only spend context on the roles worth reading, and Codex sees the live page the company maintains. If your Codex setup has web access turned off, it'll still give you the list and links, and you can open them yourself.

Codex in a script

Codex works well for repeatable jobs in a terminal, and job searching is a repeatable job.

The feed has a get_changes tool that returns new, updated, reopened and closed roles since a saved cursor. Ask Codex to save the cursor to a file after each run, and the next run only picks up what changed. Pair that with a small prompt file and you've got a morning check that takes a few seconds to kick off.

get_usage tells you how much of the monthly allowance is left, and calling it doesn't count against the allowance.

How does this compare with other ways to find jobs?

Honestly, it depends on what you're after.

LinkedIn job alerts cost nothing and reach far beyond tech. You get what companies post to LinkedIn, ranked the way LinkedIn ranks it, delivered when LinkedIn sends it.

Job boards and aggregators cover more companies overall. Their listings can lag behind the source, repeat, or linger after the company closes the role.

Writing your own scraper with Codex is possible, and Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby all have public board endpoints. The work is in the list of boards and the schedule. Finding 8,519 company boards and checking each one every two hours is where the real effort goes, and it never stops.

The feed covers the case where you want company sourced roles, checked often, in your terminal, without owning that infrastructure. It only covers companies on those three systems.

What it costs

$9 a month for 3,000 new roles, up to 1,000 new a day. Roles you've already seen that month are free to read again, and empty searches are free. Cancel anytime. If it's not for you, there's a refund within 3 days.

It doesn't submit applications. Codex finds and reads; you decide and apply.

How to try it

Sign in with Google at findyourrolefirst.click/account, subscribe, create an agent key, then run:

export JOBFEED_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY
codex mcp add jobfeed --url https://findyourrolefirst.click/mcp --bearer-token-env-var JOBFEED_API_KEY

Open Codex and ask for roles. If you also use Claude Code, the Claude Code guide has the one line for that.

Questions

Can Codex CLI search for jobs?

Yes. Add a job feed as an MCP server and Codex can search it. Find your role first gives Codex about 250,000 open roles from Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby career boards.

What's the command to add the job feed to Codex?

Set export JOBFEED_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY, then run codex mcp add jobfeed --url https://findyourrolefirst.click/mcp --bearer-token-env-var JOBFEED_API_KEY.

Does Codex get the full job description?

The feed returns metadata and links. Codex opens the original posting with its own web or browser tool to read the full description.

How often is the feed updated?

Each of the 8,519 boards is checked every two hours, spread out so new roles arrive all day.

Can I get a refund if it's not for me?

Yes. You can cancel anytime, and there's a refund within 3 days.