I'm wondering if the job board would be simpler without an auction but rather just ranking based on how many sats a job poster pays.

Having to determine how much a poster pays based on the presence of other posts is perhaps unnecessarily complicated.

What I intended was that poster could set some upper limit they'd be willing to pay, yet not be required to pay that much if the board placement wasn't contested.

Instead, maybe they just simply say, "I'll pay 50k sats/mo and let it rank me where it may." That way there's no guessing as to how much you'll pay.