Park City's two big resorts are hiring right now, and the dates are set. Park City Mountain is targeting a November 20 opening, and Deer Valley is aiming for December 5. Finding Park City seasonal jobs isn't the hard part. Finding somewhere to live is, so solve housing before you say yes to an offer, not after.
Who's hiring for winter
The two resorts
Park City Mountain is owned by Vail Resorts. Its careers page is advertising winter 2026/27 roles now, with a $20-an-hour starting wage, an Epic Pass, free lessons, and 40% off retail. In mid-October it listed 82 openings across restaurant crew, retail, bartending, ski patrol, and driving. A handful of postings were marked "Housing May Be Available." Treat that as a question to ask at the interview, not a promise.
Deer Valley is the one that's growing. This season the new Hail Peak Express adds 200 acres and seven runs, bringing the resort to 4,500 acres, according to KPCW. That comes a year after the East Village expansion more than doubled its terrain with 80 new runs and seven lifts. A resort that has grown that fast in two seasons needs more lift operators, snowmakers, cooks, and housekeepers to run it. Its pages list jobs across skier services, mountain operations, culinary, lodging, and maintenance.
The rest of town
Behind the resorts are the hotels, condo-management companies, and the restaurants and bars on Main Street and around Kimball Junction. Their openings fill out much of what you'll see on Park City job lists: snowmakers, cooks, housekeepers, bell staff, and ski instructors, often from employers you haven't heard of.
One thing to know about pay: Utah's minimum wage is the federal $7.25 an hour, according to the Department of Labor's state table. The state floor isn't what sets wages here. The resort starting wages are, and smaller employers compete against them. If an offer comes in well under $20 an hour for non-tipped work, ask why.
January without Sundance
This winter is the first one in more than four decades without the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. The 2026 festival was the last before it moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027.
The festival was a big late-January bump. Sundance's own 2025 economic impact report put that year's 11-day festival, January 23 to February 2, at $196.1 million in total economic impact and 2,697 Utah jobs supported. Local reporting found restaurants and nightclubs usually did well during the festival, while retail was harder to predict.
Nobody has said yet what fills that week in 2027. If you're weighing a restaurant or bar job partly on festival-week tips, plan around an ordinary January, and ask the manager how they're scheduling late January this year. That's a fair question, and the answer tells you something about the employer.
Where workers actually live
Park City is the most expensive housing market in Utah, and much of its workforce doesn't live there. About 21,000 workers commute into Summit County every day from outside it, according to the vice chair of the county's Housing Authority, quoted in the Park Record in July. Many come from Wasatch County, around Heber City, or from Salt Lake County.
You have three realistic routes:
- Employer housing. Ask before you accept, not after you arrive. Find out the weekly cost, how it's deducted, how many people share a room, and the move-in and move-out dates.
- WE RIP listings. Mountainlands Community Housing Trust runs the Workforce Employer Rental Incentive Program, which pays landlords incentives to rent to local workers. The listings are open only to employees of participating employers. For Deer Valley, that means full-time staff working 30 or more hours a week, with a 12-week minimum lease. Ask your employer whether they take part. In the 2024–25 winter the program secured 36 beds, so it's a real option but a small one.
- Private rentals, in Park City or more likely in Heber, Kamas, or Salt Lake. This is where rental scams find seasonal workers. Read how to avoid rental scams when you move for a seasonal job before you send a deposit to anyone.
You can skip the car here
This is where Park City does better than most ski towns. Park City Transit has been free since it started in 1975 and carries about 2 million riders a year on a dozen routes. High Valley Transit, which serves the rest of the Snyderville Basin and connects to Heber City and Salt Lake City, is free too.
That changes the housing math. A room in Heber or near a Salt Lake bus line can work for a season without a car payment, insurance, or snow tires. Before you sign a lease, check the actual route and the first and last bus times against your shift. A 6 a.m. lift-ops start and a 10 p.m. restaurant close have very different transit options.
How to land a Park City job this month
Mid-October is a good time to apply. The resorts are still hiring and opening day is five weeks out. A workable sequence:
- Apply to both resorts and two or three smaller employers in the same week.
- Ask about housing in the first conversation, and get the answer in writing with your offer.
- Line up housing before you accept, or at least before you book travel. Aim to have both settled by early November.
- If you're relying on transit, map the commute from any room you're considering before you commit.
You can browse current Park City seasonal jobs on TurnSeasons' Park City page, which lists jobs and, as landlords add them, housing in the same place. For other towns, start from seasonal jobs by town.