Hacker News's February 2026 "Who is hiring?" thread is live, continuing a tradition that's indexed over 57,000 job postings since 2018. This month's early activity shows familiar patterns and some new tactics.
What's being offered: Senior and staff engineering roles dominate, with base salaries ranging $80-250K USD. One bootstrapped SaaS company (Charted Sea) is offering $80-120K base plus 10% of net revenue shared monthly across employees - a compensation structure that's rare but logical for profitable, fast-growing small teams. Station A, a climate tech company backed by institutional capital, is hiring staff engineers in the standard $200-250K bracket.
Stack trends: TypeScript, Rust, and Go continue their dominance. Companies are increasingly explicit about tech debt migration paths - Charted Sea notes they're actively moving from TypeScript to Rust for backend services. This reflects what we're seeing across APAC enterprise: teams are willing to pay for engineers who can manage technical transitions, not just maintain existing systems.
The remote question: Nearly all February postings specify "REMOTE" with geographic restrictions (typically US or US+Canada). The companion "Who wants to be hired?" thread shows corresponding demand - candidates are explicitly filtering for remote work, not asking for it as a perk.
Context that matters: These threads have become de facto market signals. When a bootstrapped company raises salary bands by tying them to revenue, it suggests confidence in growth. When climate tech firms are staffing up (Station A is hiring), it indicates capital is still flowing to the sector despite broader tech contraction.
The thread archives at hnhiring.com show January 2026 patterns held: demand for senior engineers remains strong, but companies are more precise about what "senior" means. They're hiring for specific technical transitions and architectural decisions, not just years of experience.
What this tells CTOs: If you're competing for talent in this market, base salary alone isn't differentiating. The companies getting traction are being explicit about technical challenges, ownership scope, and upside beyond salary. Charted Sea's 10% revenue share is interesting - it's essentially treating engineers as fractional partners. We'll see if that model gains traction.