About the Role
As the Housing Manager, you’ll lead the delivery of a safe, welcoming, and high-quality accommodation experience for international students. You’ll oversee EF’s host family network and external residences, ensuring every student has a supportive “home away from home” throughout their stay.
Reporting to the Director of Student Services, you’ll lead a team of Housing Coordinators, Residence Advisors, and Host Family Recruiters while managing relationships with host families, residence partners, EF sales offices, and internal departments. You’ll combine strong people leadership, sound operational judgment, and a customer-focused mindset to solve problems, improve systems, and deliver a consistently excellent student experience.
This is an ideal opportunity for an experienced leader from student services, hospitality, tourism, accommodation, or a related customer-focused environment who enjoys working in a fast-paced, multicultural setting.
This is a full-time on-site position that may periodically require weekend work and after-hours support during peak periods, student arrivals, or urgent situations.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the Housing team: Lead, coach, and develop a team of two full-time Coordinators and 2-3 part-time employees. Set clear expectations, run effective team meetings, support performance development, and foster a collaborative, accountable, and service-oriented culture.
Deliver an exceptional accommodation experience: Oversee the student accommodation journey from placement and arrival through to departure, ensuring students, host families, and residence partners receive responsive, professional, and caring support.
Manage residences and accommodation partners: Maintain strong working relationships with external residence providers and other suppliers. Monitor service quality, safety, capacity, and student satisfaction, addressing concerns promptly and escalating issues appropriately.
Grow and support the host family network: Lead host family recruitment, onboarding, retention, and quality assurance across the local community. Ensure host families understand EF’s expectations and receive timely communication, support, and manage host family payments.
Support student welfare and resolve issues: Work directly with students to manage housing concerns, conflicts, and sensitive situations with empathy and professionalism. Support the implementation of housing and disciplinary procedures in partnership with the Director of Student Services and relevant school teams.
Drive housing operations and occupancy: Oversee day-to-day housing administration, student allocation and reporting while maintaining a commercial and solutions-oriented mindset. Proactively secure beds, confirm requests, optimize residence occupancy, and lead host family recruitment to support housing volume and recruitment goals.
Contribute to the wider school community: Collaborate with other departments and support school-wide initiatives and operational priorities. Contribute to a welcoming, inclusive campus environment that encourages cultural exchange and student success.
Collaborate across EF: Work closely with colleagues across the school and EF sales offices worldwide to resolve issue and maintain consistent quality standards for students from around the world.
What We’re Looking For
- Proven leadership experience, ideally in student life, hospitality, tourism, accommodation, or a related customer-focused environment.
- Experience managing, coaching, and developing a team.
- Strong organizational and operational skills, including administration, supplier management, and process improvement.
- Excellent communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving skills, with sound judgment in sensitive welfare situations.
- Customer-focused, adaptable, and able to work under pressure in a fast-paced, multicultural environment.
- Experience in recruitment, sales, or community outreach is an asset
- Travel or study abroad experience preferred
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in hospitality, tourism, business, education, management, or a related field.
- Professional fluency in English; additional languages are an asset.
- Full legal right to work in Canada.
What EF offers:
- 20 days vacation
- 2 paid personal days
- Health benefits package
- Discounts on EF programs for Staff, and Staff Friends and Family for all EF Programs
- Free use of EF Hello: a premium Language Learning App
- Exciting opportunities for domestic and international career advancement within 2-3 years
- Compensation - Salary range between $52k and $62k based on experience.
Some companies are in the business of banking. Others are in the business of shoes. Or sports. Or soft drinks. At EF, we're in a different kind of business. One that's a little less tangible, and a lot more important. Because our business, what we make, makes everything else possible. We're in the business of understanding. Between people. Between cultures.
For over half a century we’ve been the leader in international educational programs and experiences designed to foster such understanding. Through language, cultural exchange, academic studies, and educational travel, we create the kinds of immersive experiences that challenge biases, open minds, and pave the way for a more understanding world.
You’ll find our offices and schools located in some of the world’s greatest cities, and filled with smart, driven people (over 50,000 of us) who push each other to be better every day. But it’s what we do together - building greater understanding, breaking down barriers, and creating a better world - that makes all the difference.
Founded in 1965 in Sweden, EF (Education First) is a global association of education companies that share a common mission of opening the world through education. EF has been recognized on Forbes 2025 and 2024 World’s Best Employers and 2024 Top Companies for Women lists, Fast Company’s 2025 Next Big Things In Tech, and was a 2024 App Store Award winner in Cultural Impact.
At EF Language Abroad, we believe that the world is better when people try to understand one another. Since 1965, we've helped millions of students discover new places, embrace diverse cultures, and gain fresh perspectives. We're dedicated to our mission of opening the world through education, harnessing the power of language learning to deepen the connection between people across the globe.
We offer immersive short-term and long-term language courses and programs across different languages in the countries where they’re spoken. Through blending classroom-based lessons with interactive exercises and real-world practice, our courses bring you to the heart of the language. Together, our global staff help students from around the world develop the language skills they need to achieve their dreams.
EF is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. All positions are subject to a criminal background and/or reference checks, as applicable.
