Job Listings That Stay Open for Years

Roles that remain active for over a year , even at major tech companies. Are these ghost listings, hard-to-fill positions, or permanent open seats?

Based on 200+ companies using Greehouse ATS, most companies close a job posting within 60 to 90 days. But a surprising number of roles, across startups and Fortune 500 companies alike, remain open for a year, two years, sometimes longer. These long-running listings may reflect persistently unfilled roles, evergreen hiring pipelines, or internal demand that never fully stabilizes. In other cases, they signal structural inefficiencies in recruiting or deliberate “always-on” hiring strategies.

At the extreme end of the distribution, companies like Appier, Datadog, and Jane Street show listings that have remained active for more than 2,000 days, in some cases spanning multiple years. These are not typical vacancies. They often represent evergreen hiring pipelines, highly specialized roles with limited talent supply, or positions that are continuously reposted as part of long-term recruiting strategies.

Even among high-growth and well-funded companies, long-running listings are widespread. Databricks, HubSpot, Glean, and Robinhood all maintain roles that have remained open for multiple years, pointing to persistent talent shortages in specialized domains or ongoing recruitment funnels that operate continuously rather than in discrete hiring cycles.

The pattern is not uniform across industries. Quant trading firms, enterprise SaaS companies, and AI infrastructure teams show some of the longest-lived postings, suggesting that the most specialized talent markets are also the least liquid.