Which VC-backed startups are hiring right now? A dated count of open roles at a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolio companies, by function, city and remote.
Most lists of VC-backed startups hiring right now are a wall of logos. You click one, find three roles in a city you can't move to, and start again. I wanted numbers instead: how many roles are open at companies backed by two well-known venture funds, what kind, and where.
So I counted them. Every day my system reads company job boards directly, including the boards of companies in the a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolios. This is what that count showed on 4 November 2026.
On 4 November 2026, companies in the a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolios listed 16,988 open roles on the company job boards I track. 12,635 of them were in the US, at 392 companies.
"Portfolio" covers a wide range. It runs from ten-person seed startups to public companies like Coinbase and Samsara. And one company tilts the whole count: Anduril alone had 2,456 US roles open, about one in five. Take Anduril out and 10,179 remain.
I took the companies listed on each fund's own portfolio job board (jobs.a16z.com and jobs.khoslaventures.com), plus a few that appear on the funds' portfolio pages. I counted only companies whose job boards I can read directly, so some portfolio companies sit outside this count. I left out the funds' own job openings.
A role counts as US when its location names a US place or says remote in the US. I sorted roles into functions by the words in the title, so read those numbers as close, not exact.
A small group of large companies holds most of the roles. The 22 companies with more than 100 US roles each hold 6,992 of the 12,635, a little over half.
| Company | Fund | Open US roles |
|---|---|---|
| Anduril | a16z | 2,456 |
| OpenAI | Khosla | 626 |
| Databricks | a16z | 467 |
| Stripe | a16z | 327 |
| Waymo | a16z | 309 |
| Saronic | a16z | 257 |
| Samsara | a16z | 246 |
| Applied Intuition | a16z | 244 |
| Coinbase | a16z | 189 |
| Base Power | a16z | 187 |
| Talkiatry | a16z | 172 |
| Mach Industries | Khosla | 171 |
Look at what these companies make. Defense, autonomy and hardware show up again and again: Anduril, Saronic, Applied Intuition, Mach Industries, Waymo. If you come from manufacturing, aerospace or robotics, VC-backed hiring has more room for you than the usual "startup jobs" picture suggests.
The 12,635 US roles split by function like this, with the share of each that says remote in the location.
| Function | US roles | Share | Says remote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering and research | 5,346 | 42% | 11% |
| Sales, marketing and customer roles | 2,098 | 17% | 31% |
| Product management | 430 | 3% | 22% |
| Design | 299 | 2% | 24% |
| Data and analytics | 251 | 2% | 31% |
| Internships | 326 | 3% | 1% |
| Operations, manufacturing, finance, legal, recruiting, clinical and other | 3,885 | 31% | 15% |
Engineering leads, as you'd expect. But the last row surprises most people. Almost a third of the roles sit outside the usual tech functions: technicians, supply chain, recruiters, accountants, lawyers, nurses and therapists.
There are about 12 engineering roles for every product role. So if you're a product manager, the VC-backed market is real but small. If you sell, run operations or build hardware, it's bigger than you might think.
San Francisco and New York lead. A role can list several cities, so these numbers overlap.
| Location in the posting | US roles |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | 2,993 |
| New York | 1,788 |
| Costa Mesa | 1,378 |
| Seattle | 556 |
| Mountain View | 474 |
| Austin | 438 |
| Washington, DC | 412 |
| Los Angeles | 348 |
| Says remote | 2,044 |
Costa Mesa ranks third because Anduril has its headquarters there. Only 2,044 roles say remote, about 16%. Without Anduril, which hires mostly on site, that rises to about 20%.
Level matters too. 5,408 titles, 43%, say Senior, Staff, Principal, Lead, Director or higher. At the other end there are 326 internships and 88 titles that say new grad, early career, junior, entry level or graduate.
So VC-backed startups hire at every level, but they lean experienced. If you're early in your career, the internships and new grad roles are real, and you'll find them faster on the company's own board than through a search engine.
The big names get the attention, but most of the companies are small. 286 companies had 20 or fewer US roles open, and together they listed 2,158 roles.
Those smaller companies look different from the giants:
A company with four open roles can get lost in a big job board search. Its own job page is the place to watch. If you'd like to work at an early startup, pick ten portfolio companies in your field and check their pages each week, sorted by newest. I wrote more about that habit in this post on career-page hiring.
A sample from the 4 November count, across functions, both funds and several cities. Each link goes to the employer's own job page. Roles close, so some may be gone by the time you read this.
To see how many roles match your own title and city across all the boards I track, try the free job count tool. It needs no sign-up.
These portfolio boards are part of what we read every day. I built Zipply because checking hundreds of company pages by hand eats the hours you need for interviews.
We read the boards, search Google for your titles, score each role against your CV, skip the weak fits and tell you why, apply to the strong ones for you, and send you one email each morning with what went out. It costs $50 a month, or $550 a year. There is no free trial.
You answer the legal questions, like work authorization and sponsorship, and you see every application we send. We check every tailored CV against your real one, so nothing goes out claiming work you didn't do.
It only works in fields with enough open roles, so if your number is thin, I'll tell you before you pay. Nobody, us included, can promise you a job. If it sounds useful, you can start here.
So which VC-backed startups are hiring right now? On 4 November 2026, a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolio companies listed 12,635 US roles at 392 companies.
Apply early and apply direct. Startups post roles on their own job boards, so check those pages instead of waiting for a role to reach a big job site. Pick companies in your field, check their pages weekly, and apply soon after a role goes up. On 4 November 2026, 286 small portfolio companies had 2,158 US roles open between them.
Some do, but most want you on site or nearby. On 4 November 2026, 16% of the 12,635 US roles at a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolio companies said remote in the location. At smaller companies with 20 or fewer open roles, the share rose to 28%. Sales and data roles said remote most often.
On 4 November 2026, Anduril led the a16z and Khosla Ventures portfolios with 2,456 US roles, followed by OpenAI with 626, Databricks with 467 and Stripe with 327. Most of the other 392 hiring companies had far fewer. 286 of them had 20 or fewer US roles open.
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