- Type
- Full Time
- Posted
What this listing is
We are not advertising one specific job here. This is a standing listing for managers who want to run a remote or regional property, so that when one of these roles comes up we already know who you are and what you’re after.
The work
Running a remote property is running a small business a long way from anyone who can help you.
The guest experience is the part people picture. The rest of it is water, power, waste, freight, the internet, and a vehicle fleet held together by whoever is on site. A pump that fails at five in the afternoon is your evening. A generator that won’t start is your night. The nearest tradesman is often a day away and charges for the drive, so a manager who can diagnose the problem — and sometimes fix it — is worth a great deal to an owner.
You’ll carry the roster, the wages, the food and beverage cost, the compliance file and the maintenance schedule. On smaller properties you’ll also carry a section of the service, because there is nobody else to.
The recurring problem is people. You will spend more of the year thinking about who is leaving than about occupancy: who is homesick, who has fallen out with whom, who has quietly stopped enjoying it, and who you need to have on site by the time the season turns.
Who you’ll answer to
Two quite different jobs sit under the same title.
- Owner-operated properties — often a family who built the place. Decisions are fast, the standard is personal, and the owner may live on site or arrive without much notice.
- Group-owned properties — a head office in a capital city, a budget you’re accountable to, brand standards, and reporting. More structure, more process, less latitude.
Neither is better. They suit different people, and it’s worth knowing which one you are before you take a job.
Living on site
- Managers are usually housed properly — a cottage or a house of your own, and often partner-friendly. Meals are commonly included, along with a vehicle for property use.
- You are the most senior person on site, which means you are never entirely off. Good properties protect your days off. Ask how, at interview.
- Your team lives with you. Managing people you also eat dinner with is a real skill and it is the thing most first-time remote managers underestimate.
- Connectivity ranges from Starlink that runs fine to a satellite service you plan your evenings around.
The shape of the year
Remote hospitality hires ahead of its seasons, usually by two to three months. Roughly how it runs in Australia:
- Southern summer — Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Kangaroo Island, the NSW coast. Trading December to March, hiring September to November.
- Top End and the Kimberley — dry-season operations April to October, hiring February to May.
- Snow — hiring February to May for a June opening.
- Islands and boat-access lodges — the lift starts around June and runs through September.
- Year-round properties — no seasonal gate, rolling as people move on.
Manager roles are also the ones most often filled quietly — a phone call to someone already known, before the job is ever advertised. Being known to us before a brief lands is most of the value of registering.
On money
We won’t publish a salary band for manager roles, because packages at this level genuinely vary — and we’d rather give you no number than one we made up.
What we can tell you is what usually sits alongside the salary, because in remote work it is often worth more than the difference between two offers: housing (frequently a house of your own), meals, a vehicle, power and internet, travel to and from the property, and in some cases a second role on the property for a partner.
When we have an actual role for you, you’ll get the actual numbers — salary, roster, what’s deducted for accommodation — before you go forward for it.
Who this suits
Managers who have run a property, and second-in-charges who are genuinely ready for their own. People who are comfortable being the most senior person on site with the nearest support several hours away. People who fix things.
If you’re coming from a city venue, the operational side usually isn’t the hard part. Living where you work is.
If you’re applying from overseas, tell us your work rights when you register and we’ll be straight with you about what your situation opens and what it closes. Worth knowing before you get attached to a property.
How this works
Register on our find-work page and tell us the sort of property you want, where you’ll go and when you’re free. There are two of us and we read every registration ourselves. If something fits, we’ll call you. If nothing fits for a while you stay on the register. We’ll check in about once a year to ask whether you still want to be on it — you come off whenever you ask, and also if we check in and hear nothing back.
Registering here is not an application for a named job. We will always tell you which property a role is at before you go forward for it.
About Wild Ops
Wild Ops is a recruitment agency for remote and regional hospitality in Australia. Cindy is a chef by trade and Jordan is a carpenter who moved into managing properties. Between us we’ve run remote and regional properties here for the better part of fifteen years — luxury lodges on the Great Ocean Road, a boat-access lodge in NSW, a wilderness lodge in the Top End, a motel on the south coast of Western Australia — and for several of those years we ran a property as a two-person team, which is a fair description of what this job actually is.