Jobs in Ottawa

The Federal Government employs 120,000 people in Ottawa, representing 20% of the local workforce.

Working as a civil servant provides meaningful work contributing to the well-being of Canada, as well as a secure position with strong compensation, benefits, and work-life balance.

There are a wide variety of Federal departments in Ottawa including Global Affairs, National Defense, Justice, Finance, Environment and Climate Change, Health, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

You can see some of the current open positions by clicking here.

Ottawa is a global tech hub. A July 2020 CBRE Report pegged Ottawa as having the highest concentration of tech talent in North America, even surpassing high-profile tech hubs such as San Francisco/Silicon Valley, New York City, Boston, Seattle, Toronto and Montreal. The Kanata Tech Park alone currently has over 500 open positions.

Technology and knowledge-based businesses employ 77,000 people in Ottawa representing 11% of the local workforce, and offer some of the best tech jobs in North America from multi-national giants to fast-growing startups. (check out workinottawa.ca).

The Kanata Tech Park within one area of Ottawa is a global high-tech hub competing on the world stage with a concentration of 540 companies employing 28,000 highly-skilled employees within a few square kilometres (check out kanatanorthba.com).

Ottawa is at the global centre of innovative R&D in advanced telecommunications, next-gen networking, defense & security, clean tech, life sciences/smart-health, and autonomous vehicle technology with top tech leaders such as Amazon, Apple, Ford, Blackberry QNX, Nokia, Ericsson, Ciena, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, and Survey Monkey.

Ottawa is also anchored by the hugely popular Shopfiy, which was founded in Ottawa and remains its global headquarters (check out Shopify’s video love letter to Ottawa at youtu.be/70NWJLYqUMY).

You can see open positions within the Kanata Tech Park at discovertechnata.com (there 848 open positions as of May 2021), and note this does not include tech companies in other areas of Ottawa!

Ottawa hospitals employ over 20,000 people and are global leaders of excellence, areas of health care, and research. The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) is a world-class health-care organization leading in compassionate care, research, and innovation, and is home to the University of Ottawa Heart institute, Canada’s largest heart health research centre. Ottawa is also home to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), which is recognized nationally as a centre for complex pediatric cases.

The five largest firms are Gowling WLG, Borden Ladner Gervais, Perley-Robertson Hill & McDougall, Norton Rose Fulbright, and Nelligan Law, and the top ten law firms in Ottawa employ 636 lawyers.

The five largest firms are Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, BDO, and Ernst & Young, and the top ten accounting firms in Ottawa employ 2,816 staff.

The five largest firms are Global Public Affairs, Strategy Corp, Earnscliffe, Summa, and Hill + Knowlton, and the top ten lobbying/government relations firms in Ottawa employ 144 registered lobbyists.

A staple of the local business community, Ottawa is home to many commercial property managers, residential builders, developers, brokers, and related construction/professional firms to service the housing boom, downtown development projects, the Parliament buildings rejuvenation, and the LRT (Light Rail Transit) expansion.

Ottawa is also home to two highly-regarded universities, Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, and being the capital Canada, is home to a plethora of NGOs, charities/non-profits, national museums, and political staffing positions also known as “Working on The Hill”.