Share of the companies tracked that posted each role.
| Role family | Companies | Share of companies | Postings | Share of postings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineer | 27 | 30% | 116 | 22% |
| Account executive | 27 | 30% | 75 | 15% |
| Demand generation / growth marketing | 17 | 19% | 37 | 7% |
| Customer success | 16 | 18% | 35 | 7% |
| Product management | 16 | 18% | 34 | 7% |
| AI / ML engineer | 8 | 9% | 27 | 5% |
| Finance | 8 | 9% | 14 | 3% |
| SDR / BDR | 8 | 9% | 13 | 3% |
| Sales leader (CRO, VP Sales, Head of Sales) | 7 | 8% | 24 | 5% |
| Engineering leader (CTO, VP Engineering) | 7 | 8% | 18 | 3% |
| Revenue operations | 7 | 8% | 12 | 2% |
| Operations | 7 | 8% | 10 | 2% |
| Data / analytics | 6 | 7% | 11 | 2% |
| Talent / recruiting | 5 | 5% | 7 | 1% |
Recent postings
| Company | Title | Posted |
|---|---|---|
| Cube | VP of Revenue | 17 Sept 2026 |
| Cube | Vice President of Revenue | 17 Sept 2026 |
| Fama Technologies Inc. | VP of Marketing | 29 Apr 2026 |
| Fama Technologies Inc. | VP of Marketing | 29 Apr 2026 |
No roles match.
Employees per company; median 54.
Headquarters
What this usually means. After a revenue leader, the next hires are typically the account executives and SDRs beneath them. Ask whether the VP of Revenue seat has filled and how that leader plans to build the team.
What this usually means. A marketing leader usually brings demand generation hires with them, and the account executives already posted will need pipeline. Ask whether the seat filled and what the first marketing hires are.
What this usually means. After a run of AE hires, the next seat is usually a sales leader to run them. Ask who manages the growing team and whether that seat is planned.
What this usually means. A chief of staff search next to a growing sales team often comes before a functional leader. Ask what the next senior hire is.
What this usually means. An AI team and a sales team growing at once usually need a leader for each. Ask who runs the AI engineers as the team grows, and who will manage the account executives.
What this usually means. Fourteen engineering postings in a year is a team past its first hires. The next senior search is usually a technical leader to run research and engineering together; ask whether that seat is planned.
Most of what these companies posted adds capacity. Revenue per employee grows when a hire makes that capacity produce more. For each common pattern, this is the hire that usually comes next, and the companies whose postings fit the pattern but have not posted it yet.
After a run of account executive and SDR hires
A GTM engineer automates the account research, enrichment, routing and follow-up each rep does by hand, so the next quarter of pipeline comes from the sales team already hired rather than from more of it.
After a run of customer success hires
Onboarding, health scoring and support deflection, automated once, let each customer success manager carry more accounts, so retention grows without the team growing at the same rate.
After a run of demand generation hires
Attribution and a clean funnel tell the team which channels turn into pipeline, so budget and headcount go where they convert instead of being spread evenly.
After a run of software engineering hires with no AI roles
An applied AI engineer puts models into the product and into the team's own tooling, so each engineer ships more and the product does work customers would otherwise need people for.
The median company has 54 employees. The largest group, 24 companies, sits between 20 and 49 people, with 19 under 20 and 16 between 100 and 199. A smaller set has scaled well past that: 11 companies have more than 500 employees.
Los Angeles and San Francisco are the most common home bases, followed by New York and Seattle. At this size, a single senior hire changes how a company sells or builds, which is why the leadership searches below matter more than the posting volume.
38 of the 91 companies posted roles this year, 517 postings in all. Software engineering and account executive roles each appeared at 27 companies; software engineering accounted for 116 postings and account executives for 75.
Demand generation (17 companies), customer success (16) and product management (16) form a second tier. Posting frequency describes advertised demand, not completed hires.
Finance appeared at 8 companies, revenue operations at 7 and data and analytics at 6, a few roles each. Most of the finance postings fell late in the year, but at a handful of companies that is a scheduling detail rather than a pattern.
AI or machine-learning engineering roles appeared at 8 of the 91 companies, 27 postings in all. Jeeva.ai and Ranger AI posted six each, Orbifold AI five and Outreach four; Destro and Katalyze AI two each, Alvys and Pendo.io one.
At Ranger AI and Orbifold AI the AI roles sit inside a broader engineering build, with senior software engineers posted in the same year; neither has posted a head of AI. For most of the portfolio, AI work still sits inside an existing engineering team.
Fourteen companies posted twenty or more roles in the year, among them Alvys, Branch, ChowNow, DISQO, Invoca, mPulse, Outreach, Pendo.io and Raken. Branch, Embrace and Orbifold AI leaned to software engineers; Raken and Credit Key to account executives; HONK to customer success.
In the most recent two months, 24 companies posted 158 roles, led by account executives (12 companies) and software engineers (10). Outreach, Pendo.io, Cube, Rockbot, ChowNow, Raken, DISQO and Destro were all posting in October.
Cube opened a search for a VP of Revenue in September and Fama Technologies for a VP of Marketing in April. They are the only VP-level revenue or marketing searches among the 517 postings.
Several other companies posted senior sales roles below that level, among them ChowNow, DISQO, Rockbot and Rwazi. Ask Cube and Fama Technologies whether the seat was filled and what sales capacity comes next; ask the companies building sales teams without a posted leader whether that is deliberate.
By volume this year, Alvys, Branch, ChowNow, Destro, DISQO, HONK, Invoca, mPulse, Outreach, Pendo.io, Raken, Rockbot, Ranger AI and Rwazi each posted twenty or more roles. In the most recent two months, 24 companies posted 158 roles; Outreach, Pendo.io, Cube, Rockbot, ChowNow, Raken, DISQO and Destro were posting in October.
Software engineering and account executive roles, each at 27 of the 91 companies (30%). Demand generation (17 companies), customer success (16) and product management (16) follow.
Eight of the 91 companies posted AI or machine-learning engineering roles this year, 27 postings in all: Jeeva.ai, Ranger AI, Orbifold AI, Outreach, Destro, Katalyze AI, Alvys and Pendo.io. None posted a head of AI.
No function stands out. Finance postings clustered late in the year, but at a handful of companies; engineering and account executive roles were steady throughout.
Two VP-level searches opened in the year: Cube for a VP of Revenue (September) and Fama Technologies for a VP of Marketing (April). Ask each whether the seat was filled and what sales capacity is planned next.
The median company has 54 employees and the largest group sits between 20 and 49 people; 11 companies have more than 500.
Companies listed as current portfolio companies of Bonfire Ventures on https://www.bonfirevc.com/companies.
This is a tracked sample, not a verified complete census. 91 companies are included; 38 have observed posting history and 90 have a headcount reading. A company without a found posting may still be hiring through other channels. Company shares use all 91 tracked companies as the denominator.
The next hire that raises revenue per employee is advice from fixed rules, not a finding (src/lib/leverage.ts): a pattern counts when a company posted at least 3 roles in it in the twelve months (five for software engineering), and a company that already posted a role covering the hire, such as revenue operations for a GTM engineer, is not listed under it.
Collection limit: the 20 most recent postings per company; 14 companies reached that limit. Counts describe observed postings, not unique vacancies or completed hires. Reposts can represent the same search, and limited histories cannot establish a complete company ranking or a hiring growth rate.
91 companies in the census; 90 with a headcount reading; job boards read for 0 (the live board read has not run for this panel yet, so open roles are unknown, not zero); 517 postings over the last twelve months for 38 of them, the 20 most recent a company (14 companies at that cap, so earlier quarters are undercounted); signals cover the last 180 days. Fact sheet computed 2026-10-17; study written 2026-10-17; dataset version vertical@1.0.0; intelligence rules intelligence@0.2.1; claim check: pass. The executive summary, the sections, the FAQ answers and the limitations were revised by Human in the Loop Talent on 2026-10-17 against this fact sheet: The first archive load matched postings by company name and attached 86 postings from unrelated employers (PostiePlus retail jobs to Postie, an e-commerce brand company to Rainforest QA, a Pune business to Prado, and stray jobs to Cube, Fama, Embrace, Figment, Particle and Aforza); they were removed and the study recomputed. The generated narrative then called the archive "right now", read a three-company finance blip as the trend to watch, filed city sales-manager postings as sales leadership, and repeated funding and CEO signals whose sources were name collisions. This revision corrects each against the recomputed fact sheet and keeps the method to the limitations paragraph.
Original research computed from the signal layer of the recruiting CRM behind Human in the Loop Talent: public job boards, company news, funding announcements and headcount readings, collected continuously for every tracked company and recomputed every Sunday. A figure is published only when the sample supports it; the data behind every page is published as JSON next to it.
from companies.n
from companies.median_employees
from hiring.history_12m.by_family
from hiring.history_12m.fastest_growing
from ai_hiring.company_share
from hiring_now_60d
median 54 · 200-499: 6, 20-49: 24, 50-99: 14, 500-999: 4, 1-19: 19, 100-199: 16, 2001-10000: 4, 1000-2000: 3 · 90 of 91 with a reading
Los Angeles (10), San Francisco (9), New York (7), San Francisco, US (5), Seattle (4)
24 companies, 158 roles by posting date
seat holders not mapped yet for this panel
10 funding · 9 M&A · 22 AI initiatives · 2 stack changes, matched to companies by name and not individually verified
The family whose postings lean most into the last 90 days, measured below the cap: Finance (50% of its 6 uncapped postings, at 3 companies; a flat year would put 25% there).
Postings by quarter are not shown: with 14 companies at the archive cap, earlier quarters are undercounted and a quarterly series would read as growth that is an artefact of the cap.
This study covers the 91 companies listed as current Bonfire Ventures portfolio companies, 90 of which have a headcount reading. It reads a twelve-month archive of job postings to 17 October 2026, not live job boards, so it reports what was posted and when rather than which roles are open today. The archive matches postings to companies by name; 86 postings that belonged to unrelated employers with the same names were removed before the figures were computed, leaving 517 postings at 38 companies, capped at the 20 most recent per company (14 companies sit at that cap, so their counts are floors). The same listing posted on two job sites can appear twice. The other 53 companies have no posting in the archive and are unknown, not idle. Role families come from title rules: the sales leader family includes city and regional sales managers as well as heads of sales, and the engineering leader family includes principal and staff engineers. Leadership seat holders are not mapped and company events for this panel matched other organisations with the same names, so nothing is said about CRO changes or funding. Months named in the text are the dates the postings appeared in this archive.
Related: all intelligence, which roles precede growth, startup recruiting, post-funding hiring.
Next step
If a leadership or first-of-its-kind seat at a portfolio company has lingered past sixty days, the founder can have two people who have already passed the seat's screen in writing, with our read on each, through you. Nothing is owed unless they hire.