climbyr is an AI agent for researchers on the job market. It knows your work and what you're looking for, watches the postings, gives you an honest read on fit, and drafts the application — you approve everything before it goes anywhere.
This page walks through one example, start to finish, for a fictional researcher: Sofía Vasquez-Liu, an exoplanet astronomer at MPIA Heidelberg looking for a faculty position.
— illustrative demo · profile & posting are fictional —
Her full profile, embedded live — the page a hiring committee or collaborator sees. Scroll it; the timeline and chips respond.
climbyr reads the job boards so she doesn't. This one matched her ask; the rest never reached her.
Leiden Observatory invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in observational exoplanet astronomy. We seek a researcher who will build an independent program in radial-velocity and/or atmospheric characterization of exoplanets, complementing the institute's strengths in planet formation theory and instrumentation. The successful candidate will work alongside our planet-formation theory group and have access to guaranteed ESO time.
Review of applications begins 15 September 2026; the position remains open until filled. Salary according to the Dutch university scale (€6,648–€8,721/month) plus holiday and end-of-year allowances. Enquiries: search-exo@strw.leidenuniv.nl. Leiden University is an equal-opportunity employer.
Before anything is drafted: an assessment, gaps included.
They want an observational exoplanet researcher who can run an independent, funded program next to a theory group — which is almost exactly where you are. Worth applying.
Leads with what the assessment found; owns the gaps. Export is a print-ready PDF.
30 June 2026
Re: Tenure-track assistant professorship in observational exoplanet astronomy
Dear members of the search committee,
I am writing to apply for the assistant professorship in observational exoplanet astronomy. I study the orbital architecture of warm sub-Neptunes — how they arrive on their orbits and what they lose along the way — and I lead OBLIQUITY, an ERC programme measuring spin–orbit alignment for sixty of them to test migration theory directly. Leiden is one of the few places where that programme would sit beside the theorists it argues with. That adjacency is why I am applying.
I would arrive with my group's funding in hand: an ERC Starting Grant (€1.6M) and a DFG Emmy Noether award (€1.9M). I also maintain petitRV, an open Doppler-spectroscopy pipeline used by 38 groups — the kind of community software your advertisement values, and infrastructure work I intend to continue at Leiden with the institute's guaranteed ESO time.
I co-teach Astrostatistics II and built Princeton's Rossiter–McLaughlin teaching lab, now used by three other programmes. I have not yet carried a course alone; I expect to, and would welcome starting with the department's methods sequence. My atmospheric-retrieval experience is likewise still growing — two JWST cycles deep — and Leiden is where I would close that gap fastest.
My research statement sets out the five-year programme. I would be glad to discuss any of it.
Sincerely,
Sofía Vasquez-Liu
Standard academic format, with what Leiden asked about — software, funding, observing — kept prominent.
Plus 14 refereed co-author publications; full list on ADS.
~80 nights/yr as PI or co-I: HARPS-N, EXPRES, ESPRESSO. Trained 3 PhD students to lead HARPS-N runs at La Palma.
TESS Exoplanet Working Group (cycle-7 target list). Referee: Nature, ApJ, AJ, MNRAS, A&A — 14 manuscripts in the last 12 months.
Prof. J. Winn (Princeton) · Prof. T. Henning (MPIA) · Sagan host (Caltech) — letters submitted via the portal.
That's the loop: one profile, postings found for you, an honest read, a drafted application. Nothing sends until Sofía approves it.
climbyr is early — this demo is hand-made, and we're building it with the first cohort. If this would help you, get on the list. If something here rings false, tell us that too.