How to Pull Each B2B Data Type From an API (LeadOcean)

B2B data comes in four types you can query today: firmographic, contact, technographic and career history. Each answers a different question, and each is one filter group in a search request.

This guide shows the query for each type, a live free count, and the shape of what comes back. Intent data is out of scope here.

TL;DR

• Four types, four requests: firmographic and technographic filters narrow companies, contact data reaches the person, career history explains who they are.
• Time: about 15 minutes. Cost: 5 LeadOcean records, because counts are free and you pull only 3 sample rows, 1 person enrichment and 1 company enrichment.
• Size every list with a free count first. Pull records only when the number looks right.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account. The Free plan ($0, 1,000 records for life, no card, 5 requests a second) covers this guide. Start at pricing.
• An API key, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq, or any HTTP client. Requests go to https://api.leadocean.io with the header x-api-key.
• Optional: the hosted MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp for the free count tools.

export LEADOCEAN_API_KEY="your_key_here"

Step 1: Know the four types

Each type is a group of fields on a person or company record. Pick the type by the question you need answered.

Technographic data covers about 7.8M crawled sites, so a company with no crawl has no tech fields. Treat an empty tech filter result as "not crawled", not "uses nothing".

Step 2: Check exact filter values

Enum filters take exact strings. A wrong value returns an empty result, not an error. Look values up first, for free.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/enums" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq 'keys'

In an MCP client, ask: "List the job_level values with leadocean_list_enum_values." Job levels are C-Team, VP, Director, Manager, Staff and Other. Job functions look like Sales & Business Development. Countries are ISO codes such as CA.

Step 3: Size a contact and firmographic list for free

Add count=true as a query parameter and send limit 1. No records are spent and data comes back empty.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["CA"],
    "limit": 1
  }' | jq '.meta'

meta.total is capped at 100,000. The MCP tool leadocean_count_leads takes the same filters and returns the total, plus how many employers the people span (distinctCompanies).

Step 4: Add a technographic filter

Technographic data filters people by what their employer's site runs. Use a category name from tech_category, such as CRM, or a tool name under technologies.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["C-Team"],
    "employeeRange": ["51-200"],
    "technologyCategories": ["CRM"],
    "limit": 1
  }' | jq '.meta'

This stacks a firmographic filter (employeeRange), a contact filter (jobLevel) and a technographic one in a single request. That stacking is the point of keeping the types in one record.

Step 5: Pull a small sample

Once the count looks right, pull 3 rows. Search body is flat JSON, filters are arrays, limit runs 1 to 100, and you page with cursor.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["CA"],
    "limit": 3
  }' | jq '.data[0]'

This spends 3 records. Each row carries has_email and email_status as flags, not the address. The MCP count tool defaults to verified, catch_all_valid and catch_all; add emailStatus to the search body to pull the same set.

Step 6: Enrich one person and one company

Enrichment takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. Use the person_id a search row carries at meta.source_ids.person_id (digits only).

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id": "123456789", "reveal_email": true}'

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/companies/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain": "acme.com"}'

Person enrich returns career history in resume_data: past roles in experiences[], plus educations[], certifications[] and awards[], each when held. Past employers carry no company_id yet. A company comes back as company_data, company_detected_technologies and company_metrics. A lookup that finds nothing is a 404 and costs nothing. These two calls spend 2 records.

What you get

Live counts from the free leadocean_count_leads tool, run on 2026-10-21. Both counts are mailable (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all email), which is the tool's default.

Response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "profile_data": { "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe", "profile_headline": "VP Sales at Acme" },
    "contact_data": {
      "has_email": true,
      "email_status": "verified",
      "email_type": "work",
      "contact_current_experiences": [
        { "job_title": "VP Sales", "company_name": "Acme", "company_domain": "acme.com" }
      ]
    },
    "resume_data": {
      "experiences": [
        { "job_title": "Director of Sales", "company_name": "Example Co" }
      ],
      "educations": [],
      "certifications": []
    },
    "meta": { "schema": "leadocean.person.v1", "fetched_at": "2026-10-01" }
  }
}

The four blocks (profile_data, contact_data, resume_data, meta) follow the person schema in the enrich docs. Check exact names there before you map them into a database.

Troubleshooting

FAQ