Part I of this series goes through the top eight websites for finding remote work regardless of industry or job title. Entries one through four on this list are job boards that are exclusively for remote jobs. Entries five through eight require you to filter out non-remote jobs.

Yes, the total number of sites that have remote jobs posted is much longer than eight. However, I wanted to create a curated list based on my own experience, along with explanations about why I find these options more helpful than others. The sites listed below have seemed to outperform others when I was searching for work, both in terms of the number of remote jobs listed and quality of the jobs listed.

What has your experience been like on these job boards? Are there any you think should be added to this list? Feel free to leave a comment below. Part II of this series will cover the best job boards for specific industries and specific roles.

1) Workew

When looking for remote jobs, Workew consistently has excellent roles available from a number of top companies. Not only does the site include remote jobs at small startups but also at a lot of major tech organizations. A few examples include Reddit, Shopify, Mozilla, InVision, and Wikimedia Foundation… and that’s only looking at job posts from the past 2–3 weeks as I write this article in July 2019.

One helpful aspect of Workew is that the job posters can make it clear where the remote employees can work from. For instance, some opportunities are listed as “Anywhere”. Meanwhile, others are remote within certain geographic limits (i.e. “Anywhere in US” or “Anywhere in Europe”). From the perspective of the applicant, this categorization makes it easier to ensure remote collaboration is practical across timezone differences and saves time on the application process.

2) Remotive

Besides having one of the coolest homepage mascots of any job post site, Remotive includes plenty of remote work opportunities. What I found when searching Remotive is that there are a lot of tech startups posting jobs… many which I wasn’t familiar with. Initially, I thought that the companies were super small (and maybe with limited funding). However, after researching a few of the companies posting jobs, I found that many either had a significant amount of venture-backed capital or were already generating revenue. A lot of companies posting jobs on Remotive are working on innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) products for a variety of industries. A few examples include Hospital IQ, Netlify, Havest, and smartbnb. Similar to Workew, Remotive also gives job posters the ability (although only optional) to include specific geographic limits on where remote workers should be located. Posters can even be a bit more specific on Remotive (i.e. France +/- 2 hours).

3) NODESK

Compared to the two options above, NODESK is unique in that it allows job posters to list the salary ranges for specific positions. Clearly, this helps save candidates a lot of time. If a job posted is below your required salary, for example, you can know immediately instead of having to ask in an interview or having to find out way down the line in the application process. One thing to note about this site is that generally only 3–4 new job posts are added each day (weekends usually 0). Nonetheless, the quality of remote jobs listed on NODESK is likely second to none. A few companies posting jobs on NODESK include Stripe, GitHub, HubSpot, Plaid, and DuckDuckGo.

4) We Work Remotely

We Work Remotely is another excellent source of remote work opportunities. One of the features that sets We Work Remotely apart is its job category headers that indicate when the last job for a particular category was listed. Seeing “Programming Jobs Latest Posted 4 hours ago” or “DevOps & Sysadmin Jobs Latest post 20 minutes ago” is helpful if you’re someone who is actively looking for new remote work opportunities. First, this allows you to quickly distinguish between jobs that you’ve possibly already seen posted when visiting the site and ones that you haven’t seen yet. Second, this helps you get a better sense of which types of roles are being actively posted on the site. Although it’s not a direct correlation, you might be able to get a better perspective of what areas are currently in the biggest demand. For someone who has specialties in multiple disciplines or someone who is looking to train for a new type of role altogether, this feature on We Work Remotely can be a good way to determine where to focus your remote job search.

General-Purpose Websites That Have Quality Remote Jobs (And Tips For Filtering Out Non-remote Jobs)

The remaining entries on Part I are general-purpose job sites. That means you might need to add “remote” to your search. You might have to carefully read job descriptions to ensure the companies say, “The role is not remote.” These job listings will often show up in the search results, along with a host of opportunities that are remote. This actually happens more than you think, so be sure to check that isn’t the case for each one.

Also, it’s a good idea to search for the location “Remote, OR”. In this case, “OR” is actually an abbreviation for Oregon. Why do job posters add this as the location even though the job isn’t based in that location? Well, the main reason is that many of the major job posting websites don’t actually even have an option for companies to add “Remote Anywhere” or “Anywhere in the US” as an option in the location field. Instead, they choose “Remote, OR” for whatever reason.

5) Glassdoor

Glassdoor is known for its focus on employee reviews and salary listings of companies; however, it has also become a top place to search for remote jobs. What’s cool about Glassdoor is the fact that those same reviews can be accessed on the Glassdoor Jobs page via the “Rating” tab. For those seeking remote work, this can be a huge plus. That’s because this feature can often help to get a better sense of not only what employees are saying about the companies they work for in general (i.e. salary, interactions with management, etc.) but also how they view the company’s remote culture (i.e. Do they find collaboration to be seamless or difficult? If there are employees in a central office and remote, do remote workers think the company values remote workers the same as those working in the office?). While these answers aren’t always clear, there are plenty of cases where comments from existing employees can help you determine if a particular company is a good fit for you.

6) SimplyHired

When it comes to job board aggregator sites, SimplyHired is one of my favorite options. Like other job board websites, you’ll find that you can get job alerts sent to your inbox. It is also like other sites in that you can filter when the job was posted (7 days, 14 days, 30 days). However, it has an additional search filter option that sets it apart called “Since Last Visit”. As the name suggests, this feature provides you with an easy way to filter out jobs that you have viewed previously. Again, “Since Last Visit” is particularly nice to have for people who are actively searching the site on a regular basis.

7) LinkedIn

Yes, the world’s largest career networking site makes the list of top places to search for remote jobs. Compared to other sites on this list, I find that LinkedIn has a lot more corporate jobs posted. However, there are plenty of startups as well. Ultimately, the reason why I find LinkedIn useful is the ability to get a better sense of how remote-friendly a company is or might be. Of course, this can be done regardless of whether the role you’re applying for was posted on LinkedIn Jobs or on another job board. For example, in some cases, it might be possible that the job you’re applying for could be remote but doesn’t state that in the job description. If you see that the company already has a distributed team, it’s possible that the role might already be remote or could become remote if you ask during the interview process. You could also get a better sense of the geographic distribution of the team. For example, people working at a particular company might be working remotely but on the same continent. You might live on a different continent than everyone else on a team of thirty people. So… although the role might be remote, you would need to find a common time window to collaborate across timezones. Also, there’s a possibility that the company actually prefers other candidates who live in or close to a particular timezone. One thing to note about LinkedIn is geographic limitations are set by default. For me, when I leave the location field blank during a search on LinkedIn, the list is still automatically set to only locations in the United States. If looking for job opportunities posted by companies based in other regions of the world, you’ll likely have to search on a country-by-country basis. This means you can’t type “Asia” and look at a range of opportunities throughout the continent. You’d have to narrow it down on each search to “China”, “Japan”, “Singapore”, etc.

8) AngelList

What I find is that AngelList probably has the biggest range of remote opportunities among any job board on the web. Personally, I have scheduled more interviews through this site than through any others on this list. Some have led to remote work opportunities. Others haven’t. While LinkedIn’s search functionality is probably too focused on automatic geographic filters, AngelList is just the opposite. I find it difficult to filter out specific countries or regions. Although I am able to easily search for jobs that are specifically remote with “remote possible” or “mostly or fully remote” checkboxes, I find the process of filtering out where the company/founders are based to be quite difficult. As an example, it’s possible that you might live in Country Y and don’t want to work with a company based in Country X altogether. This can be because of differences in salary, differences in timezone, or other reasons. However, you still want to include a long list of other possible countries or regions. As of August 2019, this isn’t easy to do with AngelList. Thankfully, though, it’s still possible to do this manually by clicking the “skip” button on each opportunity you find in Country X.

AngelList is also unique in that many companies posting jobs on the site are searching for co-founders or equity-only positions with no base salary. There is also a range of unpaid internships listed. For remote workers who simply want to work for cash, these are important details not to overlook. What I like the most about AngelList is that all opportunities at least have some compensation range listed. Even though the positions might ultimately turn out to pay less or more, you at least have an idea of what you should expect from potential remote work opportunities.