Job alerts with n8n or Zapier

This recipe builds a weekly job alert with no server of your own: a scheduled call to POST /v1/listings/posted-this-week from an n8n HTTP Request node or a Zapier webhook action. The call is synchronous — the matching roles come back in the same response — so the flow simply maps them into Slack or email.

How does the pipeline fit together?

1. Schedule — an n8n Schedule Trigger or Zapier “Every Week” trigger fires once a week.
2. Submit — an HTTP node calls RolesAPI with your search; the matching roles are in the response body.
3. Notify — the next node maps the roles into Slack or email.

Step 1: Submit the weekly search

In your scheduled HTTP Request node (n8n) or a Webhooks by Zapier POST action:

curl -X POST "https://api.rolesapi.com/v1/listings/posted-this-week" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_live_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keyword": "backend engineer",
    "location": "Austin, TX",
    "country": "us",
    "max_pages": 2
  }'

The call responds synchronously with the matching roles in data and costs 1 credit per page fetched (2 here).

Step 2: Map the response fields

Each item in the response’s data array is a role — map these fields into your Slack message or email:

Notification field	Role field
Title line	title at company.name
Location	location (plus remote)
Salary	salary.min–salary.max salary.currency
Posted	posted_at
Link	url

A Slack message template for an n8n Slack node:

New this week: {{ $json.title }} at {{ $json.company.name }}
{{ $json.location }} - posted {{ $json.posted_at }}
{{ $json.url }}

In Zapier, feed the webhook action’s data output into a Slack “Send Channel Message” or Gmail action with a Looping step for multiple roles.

What about async jobs and signatures?

If you graduate to async work — big batches via POST /v1/roles/batch or deep searches — register a hook URL once with POST /v1/webhooks and RolesAPI will POST signed job.succeeded / job.failed events to it (see the Webhooks guide). Every delivery carries x-rolesapi-signature, and the secret returned at registration verifies it. In n8n, drop a Function node between the Webhook node and the rest of the flow:

const crypto = require("crypto");

const secret = $env.ROLESAPI_WEBHOOK_SECRET;
const header = $json.headers["x-rolesapi-signature"] || "";
const rawBody = $json.rawBody; // enable "Raw Body" on the Webhook node

const parts = Object.fromEntries(header.split(",").map(p => p.split("=")));
const t = Number(parts.t);
if (Math.abs(Date.now() / 1000 - t) > 300) {
  throw new Error("Signature timestamp outside tolerance");
}

const expected = crypto
  .createHmac("sha256", secret)
  .update(`${parts.t}.${rawBody}`)
  .digest("hex");

if (!crypto.timingSafeEqual(Buffer.from(expected, "hex"), Buffer.from(parts.v1, "hex"))) {
  throw new Error("Bad signature");
}

return $input.all();

For a lighter-weight guard on Zapier, use a hard-to-guess Catch Hook URL and a Filter step that checks event equals job.succeeded.

What does this cost?

Two credits a week (one per page) — about 8–9 credits a month, well inside the free plan’s 100 credits while you evaluate.