--- title: "StepStone API: what exists, what doesn't, and how to get German jobs data" description: "Search for the StepStone API and half the results are not even the same company - a New York investment firm shares the name." canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/stepstone-api date_published: 2026-08-28 date_modified: 2026-09-26 author: Dvir Atias --- # StepStone API: what exists, what doesn't, and how to get German jobs data Search for the StepStone API and half the results are not even the same company - a New York investment firm shares the name. The job platform's real API surface lives at api.stepstone.com, and it is entirely write-side: XML job feeds in, applications out, nothing to read. There is no search endpoint, no self-serve key, and no roadmap item promising one. Here is what the Jobfeed and Apply APIs actually do, what integration vendors mean when they advertise StepStone support, and the working path to live German job-posting data. Search for the **StepStone API** and the results page plays a trick on you before you read a single doc. The domain at position one, `api.stepstone.com`, belongs to the job platform you are looking for. The one right under it, stepstonegroup.com, is a New York private-markets investment firm that happens to share the name - its login portal ranks for this query and has nothing to do with jobs at all. The company you want is **The Stepstone Group**, the Düsseldorf employment platform founded in 1996 that runs stepstone.de and much of Europe’s online job advertising with it. Once you are on the right site, the second discovery lands: the official StepStone API is real, documented and entirely **write-side**. You can push jobs in and pull applications out. You cannot search or read a single posting. This post covers what the API actually does, what vendors mean when they advertise a StepStone integration, and the working paths to German and European jobs data. ## What the official API surface actually is StepStone’s developer documentation lives in a public knowledge base at `api.stepstone.com`, and every product in it points the same direction - into the platform: - **Jobfeed, as Pull Feed or Push Feed.** The core integration for HR-tech partners and multiposting vendors. Your system exposes (or pushes) an XML feed of your customers’ vacancies, and StepStone ingests it onto its boards. The XML format is documented per platform family: one guide for Stepstone Germany, one shared guide for Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and PNET, and a separate one for the HotelCareer and Gastrojobs verticals. - **Apply via Standard API and Apply via Feed.** The application-delivery half, with OpenAPI specs published on SwaggerHub. When a candidate applies on StepStone, the application is delivered back into the partner’s ATS instead of an inbox. - **Quality Signals via webhook.** Feedback on ad and feed quality, delivered to the partner as events. Access follows the same logic. There is no signup form that ends with a key. Customers request a feed setup through a questionnaire, HR-tech partners go through a partner process, and the front door for both is a service desk reachable at helpdesk-jobfeed@stepstone.de. Every credential is anchored to someone paying to advertise on the platform. Try it without a key ``` curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search ``` Only `/v1/sandbox/*` needs no key. ## The endpoint that does not exist Nowhere in that knowledge base is there a job-search endpoint, a listings feed you can subscribe to as a reader, or any route that returns postings you did not put there yourself. That is not an oversight, and StepStone is not unusual - it is the same design that led [Indeed to retire its public API keys](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-key) and keeps [SEEK’s otherwise excellent developer platform](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/seek-api) explicitly closed on the read side. A job board sells reach to employers and attention to candidates; the listings database is the moat. A read API would hand the moat to anyone with a cron job. So when an ATS or job-distribution vendor advertises a “StepStone API integration”, it means exactly one thing: their software can push a customer’s vacancies onto StepStone’s boards through Jobfeed and collect the applications back through the Apply API. If that is what you are building, the docs are public, the XML guides are concrete, and the service desk is a real front door. Budget for a partner process, not an afternoon. ## Why the read side matters more than one board The reason developers keep searching for this API is the footprint. The Stepstone Group has been buying reach for two decades: Totaljobs in the UK in 2012, the US programmatic-advertising platform Appcast in 2019, PNET in South Africa, plus the hospitality verticals HotelCareer and Gastrojobs. Since April 2025 the group operates as an independent company majority-owned by KKR and CPP Investments, spun out of Axel Springer’s classifieds portfolio. In Germany especially, StepStone is one of the two names every recruiter knows. If your product needs German-market hiring data, this is exactly the inventory you wish you could query - and cannot. ## The unofficial route, priced honestly Because the demand is real and unmet, scraper marketplaces fill the gap: hosted actors that take a keyword and a country portal (stepstone.de, .at, .nl, .be) and return listing data per result. They work, until they do not. You inherit the standard scraper problems - selectors that break without notice, the same vacancy duplicated across portals, expired ads that still render, and no signal for the moment a role closes. Automated collection also sits against the site’s terms of use, which is a conversation for your counsel, not a blog post. Fine for a weekend analysis; expensive the day a product depends on it. ## Reading the German market from the open layer The honest disclosure first: **JobsPipe does not index StepStone.** Our German coverage comes from sources that publish openly - LinkedIn, Indeed, public Workday tenants, SmartRecruiters and the other ATS platforms employers host their own careers sites on - collected directly, deduplicated into one record per vacancy and liveness-checked so closed roles leave the corpus. Measured against the live database on the day this post published: **169,643 active postings located in Germany**, across 37,713 hiring companies. By source, LinkedIn contributes 126,361, Indeed 39,261, public Workday tenants 2,603 and SmartRecruiters 1,364. Every record is classified - occupation code, industry code, extracted skills - which is the difference between a mirror of one board and a dataset you can filter: ``` curl -X POST "https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer jp_live_YOUR_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "job_country_code_or": ["DE", "AT"], "job_location_or": ["Berlin", "Munich"], "skills_or": ["python", "aws"], "posted_at_max_age_days": 30, "limit": 25 }' ``` Add `job_title_or` for title matching, or `"occupation_code_or": ["2512"]` to sweep every software-developer role regardless of phrasing. Records come back with `company`, the `url` of the original listing, `date_posted`, salary fields where the employer published one, and a `status` plus `closed_at` so you know when a vacancy died. The free tier returns 1,000 jobs to start - no card, no partner review. ## So which path is yours - **Posting your customers’ ads to StepStone.** The official Jobfeed and Apply APIs are the only real option and they do that job well. Start with the knowledge base and the Jobfeed service desk. - **Scraping the boards.** Possible via hosted scrapers, fragile by construction, and a terms-of-use question before it is a technical one. - **Reading the market.** There is no official route and there will not be one. Read the layer underneath instead, where employers publish the same vacancies openly - the [side-by-side of jobs APIs](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/best-jobs-api-2026) covers every option in that category. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Does StepStone have a job search API? No. The official API at api.stepstone.com is entirely write-side: Jobfeed, as Pull Feed or Push Feed, takes XML feeds of vacancies into the platform, the Apply APIs deliver applications back into a partner's ATS, and Quality Signals arrive via webhook. There is no search endpoint, no listings feed for readers and no route that returns postings you did not put there, and there is no roadmap item promising one. ### How do I get StepStone API access? There is no signup form that ends with a key. Customers request a feed setup through a questionnaire, HR-tech partners go through a partner process, and the front door for both is the Jobfeed service desk at helpdesk-jobfeed@stepstone.de. Every credential is anchored to someone paying to advertise on the platform, so budget for a partner process rather than an afternoon. The XML format is documented per platform family: Germany; Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and PNET; and HotelCareer and Gastrojobs. ### Does JobsPipe include StepStone listings? No, JobsPipe does not index StepStone. Its German coverage comes from sources that publish openly - LinkedIn, Indeed, public Workday tenants, SmartRecruiters and other ATS platforms employers host careers sites on - collected directly, deduplicated into one record per vacancy and liveness-checked so closed roles leave the corpus. Each record carries an occupation code, industry code, extracted skills, the original listing url, salary fields where published, and a status plus closed\_at. The free tier returns 1,000 jobs to start with no card or partner review. Related ## Keep reading - [Reference · Aug 7, 2026JobStreet API: where it went, and how to get South-East Asian jobs data](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/jobstreet-api) - [Reference · Aug 6, 2026SEEK API: what it does, what it cannot do, and how to get Australian jobs data](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/seek-api) - [Guide · Sep 2, 2026Wellfound API: why every result points inward, and how to get startup job data](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/wellfound-api) - [Guide · Jul 27, 2026O\*NET API: free occupational data from the Department of Labor](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/onet-api) - [Guide · Aug 14, 2026Careerjet API: a 90-country jobs API built for publishers, not pipelines](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/careerjet-api) --- Try it with no key: `curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search`. AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, MCP server, pricing. Free key (1,000 jobs to start): https://jobspipe.dev/signup