POST 01

H-1B Salary Search: Open-Source Build with AI

This project documents how I built a free, open-source H-1B salary search platform using AI-assisted development. The stack combines a Python ETL pipeline, data quality cleanup, and Cloudflare edge caching to keep search responses fast and infrastructure costs low.

What this article covers

• Data ingestion and cleaning for U.S. Department of Labor LCA data
• Python ETL workflow and quality checks for salary records
• Architecture decisions for edge cache, KV, and database layers
• Cost-performance trade-offs and scaling strategy

Why it matters

H-1B salary data is useful for professionals, recruiters, and hiring teams who need market-aware compensation benchmarks. The goal of this build is to provide a cleaner and faster open-source alternative with transparent methodology.