LeadOcean + Clay: find recently hired decision makers at your target companies

You get a Clay table of people who run a function at your target accounts and started the role in the last 90 days. New leaders have a budget to set and no loyalty to the old vendor. The recipe is one HTTP API column calling POST /v1/people/search for each domain. Clay's template is a table you duplicate (Clay, September 2026). This version uses LeadOcean as the people source, and a free key is enough to test it.

LeadOcean has no "started recently" filter. You search by domain and level, then keep rows by start date.

How it works

1. Get a LeadOcean key. Sign up at app.leadocean.io/register. Free is 1,000 records, no card.
2. Add a domain column. One target company domain per row, such as acme.com. Name it Company Domain.
3. Add an HTTP API column. Set POST and https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search, then send the domain and the levels you sell to. The column needs Clay Growth or higher (Clay pricing, September 2026).
4. Return the people. Set the Field path to data. Each person's current role sits in contact_data.contact_current_experiences with a start_date.
5. Keep the new ones. Add a formula column that reads each person's start_date from the data list and keeps those within the last 90 days. Check five rows by hand first.
6. Enrich only the survivors. Call POST /v1/people/enrich with the person_id and reveal_email true. Do this on the short list, not on every row.

Configuration

Method:   POST
URL:      https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search
Headers:  x-api-key: <your LeadOcean key>
          content-type: application/json
Body:     {
            "domain": ["/Company Domain"],
            "jobLevel": ["C-Team", "VP", "Director"],
            "limit": 25
          }
Field paths to return:
          data

Clay marks a column reference inside a JSON string with a leading slash (Clay docs, September 2026). Save the key as a header account so it is not visible in the column. Test the same call first.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain":["acme.com"],"jobLevel":["C-Team","VP","Director"],"limit":25}'

Filter values are exact strings. List them with GET /v1/enums/job_level. Narrow by function with jobFunction if you sell to one team.

Field mapping

Cost at 10,000 rows

10,000 people returned cost LeadOcean 10,000 records, one per person (LeadOcean docs, October 2026). Free covers the first 1,000, once. Solo is $97 a month and Agency is $497 a month, with a fair-use pace instead of credits (LeadOcean pricing). Sizing counts and empty pages are free.

Clay uses one Action per HTTP call (Clay pricing, September 2026). At 25 people a call, 10,000 rows take about 400 calls. Growth starts at $495 a month, or $446 a month billed yearly, with 40,000 Actions included.

Troubleshooting

FAQ