How to Apply to Queen University

19 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 1 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Queen's is a U15 and AAU research university with approximately 30,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, founded in 1841, headquartered in Kingston, Ontario, with a UK teaching centre at Bader College, Herstmonceux Castle.
  • Patrick Deane has served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor since 1 July 2019. His mandate centres on Indigenous reconciliation, Ontario fiscal constraints, and repositioning the research portfolio.
  • The institution's strongest programmes include the Smith School of Business, the School of Medicine and broader Faculty of Health Sciences, theoretical and experimental physics (SNOLAB, 2015 Nobel), geological sciences, and Global Development Studies.
  • The 2024 to 2025 formalisation of an Anishinaabe partnership with local First Nations is a meaningful institutional commitment that shapes curriculum, research, community engagement, and hiring expectations.
  • Ontario's tuition freeze on domestic students, the federal cap on international study permits (January 2024 and tightened through 2025), and rising pension and benefit obligations have produced a structural budget constraint that is openly discussed in Principal communications.
  • Competitively the realistic Canadian peer set is University of Toronto, McGill, UBC, Alberta, and McMaster. Queen's is smaller and less richly endowed per capita than Toronto and McGill but offers a tight residential research-intensive culture.
  • Faculty, librarians, archivists, and research-track staff are represented by QUFA. Non-academic staff are represented by several CUPE locals. Teaching and research assistants and postdoctoral fellows are represented by PSAC Local 901. Registered nurses in clinical teaching are represented by ONA. Almost every non-executive role is covered by a collective agreement.
  • Hiring uses a generic careers provider for staff roles (careers.queensu.ca) and faculty-specific academic recruitment systems for QUFA-covered positions. PSAC 901 student employment is administered through SOLUS and departmental graduate offices.
  • Faculty searches run for four to six months with a two-day campus visit including a job talk, teaching demonstration, and EDIIA conversations. Staff searches run for three to eight weeks through structured competency panels.
  • The institution is English-primary. French, Indigenous languages, and other languages are valued for specific roles without being general requirements. Compensation is competitive within Canadian universities and below US R1 and private-industry levels.

About Queen University

Queen's University at Kingston, commonly known as Queen's, is one of Canada's oldest and most selective research universities. Founded on 16 October 1841 by Royal Charter of Queen Victoria, two and a half decades before Canadian Confederation, the institution traces its intellectual lineage to the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Presbyterian tradition that shaped its founding curriculum. The main campus occupies roughly 160 acres on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Kingston, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, with a secondary west campus and an Innovation Park research corridor extending west of the historic core. As of the 2024 to 2025 academic year the university enrols approximately 30,000 students across undergraduate, graduate, and professional programmes and employs roughly 7,000 faculty and staff between the Kingston campus, the Bader College teaching centre at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, United Kingdom, and smaller research and clinical sites across Ontario. Queen's is a member of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, the informal but consequential peer grouping of Canada's most research-intensive institutions, and a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a distinction it shares in Canada only with the University of Toronto and McGill University. AAU membership is not merely honorific; it is a structural signal that the institution competes in research output, faculty credentials, and graduate training with the strongest public and private research universities on the continent. Queen's also holds membership in the Matariki Network of Universities and Universitas 21, partnerships that shape exchange programmes, research collaboration, and student mobility. For a candidate evaluating the institution against Canadian peers, the realistic comparison set is University of Toronto, McGill, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, and McMaster; against US peers it sits comfortably alongside the smaller AAU publics (Iowa, Kansas, Pittsburgh) and strong liberal-arts-plus-research privates. The academic portfolio is anchored by the Faculty of Arts and Science, the largest and most diverse faculty; the Smith School of Business, which is widely regarded as one of the two or three leading business schools in Canada and which runs a distinctive residential MBA, an Executive MBA, a Master of Finance, and a Master of Management Analytics among its professional programmes; the Faculty of Health Sciences, which houses the School of Medicine (established 1854, among the oldest in Canada), the School of Nursing, and the School of Rehabilitation Therapy; the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science; the Faculty of Education, based at the Duncan McArthur Hall campus; and the Faculty of Law. Historic strengths include theoretical and experimental physics (Queen's researcher Art McDonald shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for neutrino work at SNOLAB), geological sciences, history, philosophy, and global development studies. Bader College at Herstmonceux Castle, a gift from the late Alfred and Isabel Bader, operates as Queen's residential UK campus and delivers first-year and upper-year international-study terms within the Queen's degree structure. The current Principal and Vice-Chancellor is Patrick Deane, who took office on 1 July 2019 after a decade as President and Vice-Chancellor of McMaster University and earlier service as Provost at Queen's itself. Deane's mandate has been defined by three parallel challenges: responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action and the university's own Extending the Rafters Indigenous inclusion framework, including the 2024 to 2025 formalisation of an Anishinaabe partnership with local First Nations; managing a structural budget deficit driven by Ontario's tuition freeze on domestic students, the federal cap on international study permits announced in January 2024 and tightened through 2025, and rising pension and benefit obligations; and repositioning the research portfolio around the Tri-Agency (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC) priorities and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Public communications from the Principal's office through 2024 and 2025 have been unusually candid about the fiscal pressure, with explicit references to position vacancies held open, programme reviews, and internal reallocation of resources. Candidates considering Queen's in 2026 should read the most recent Principal's report and the annual budget presentation before interviewing. The labour environment is unionised and active. Faculty, librarians, and archivists are represented by the Queen's University Faculty Association (QUFA), whose most recent collective agreement runs through 2025 and is under active bargaining at the time of writing. Non-academic staff across administrative, technical, and service functions are represented by several Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals, principally CUPE 229 (operational services), CUPE 1302 (service staff), and CUPE 254 (security and residence). Teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and postdoctoral fellows are represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), through PSAC Local 901. Registered nurses at Student Wellness Services and in clinical teaching roles are represented by the Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA). For a candidate unfamiliar with Canadian academic labour law, the practical implication is that almost every non-executive role is covered by a collective agreement that sets salary grids, step progression, hours of work, overload rules, and grievance procedures. Research associates, sessional instructors, and contract faculty sit within QUFA's scope under specific articles. This is a strength for predictability and fairness, and a constraint for hiring speed and discretionary flexibility; understanding which agreement covers the posting you are applying to is a meaningful competitive advantage at interview. Kingston itself shapes the hiring proposition. The city of roughly 135,000 residents sits on Lake Ontario between Toronto and Montreal, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from each. It is historically a garrison town (the Royal Military College is adjacent to Queen's) and a corrections town (Kingston Penitentiary, now closed as an operating prison, and several federal institutions remain in the region). The university is the largest employer in the city and the anchor tenant of the local economy, along with Kingston Health Sciences Centre, to which the Faculty of Health Sciences is clinically affiliated. Housing is meaningfully cheaper than Toronto or Vancouver but has risen sharply since 2020; winters are long; the cultural scene is small but genuine; and the commute between Kingston and Toronto or Ottawa is realistic but not daily. Candidates relocating from a major Canadian metro often describe Kingston as a step change in pace and community rather than a compromise. Competitively, Queen's is not the largest Canadian research university (Toronto is roughly three times its size) and is not the best-funded per capita (McGill and UBC have larger endowments relative to enrolment). What it offers is a tight, residential, research-intensive culture with an unusually strong undergraduate experience, meaningful graduate training in targeted fields, a globally recognised business school, and a small-city quality of life in which the university is the centre of gravity. The institution is English-primary; French language ability is valued in specific roles (Modern Languages, Government Relations, certain clinical and Indigenous-engagement roles) but is not a general requirement. If you are choosing between Queen's, Toronto, McGill, and Alberta at roughly equivalent stages of a Canadian academic or professional career, choose based on what kind of community you want to be part of, what research infrastructure you need, and whether the Kingston geography is a feature or a constraint for your life.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Confirm which hiring stream applies to your role

    Confirm which hiring stream applies to your role. Queen's operates three broadly separate funnels: faculty and academic hiring (tenure-track, tenured, teaching-stream, continuing-adjunct, and research-track appointments governed by the QUFA collective agreement and Faculty-level search committees); staff hiring (professional, administrative, technical, trades, and service positions in CUPE, non-union management and professional, or confidential exclusions); and student or contingent hiring (teaching assistantships and postdoctoral fellowships under PSAC Local 901). Each stream uses different postings pages, different timelines, and different evaluation criteria, so read the posting header carefully before you start.

  2. 2
    Start at the canonical careers entry point

    Start at the canonical careers entry point. Staff postings are published at queensu.ca/humanresources/careers and at careers.queensu.ca, which consolidates non-academic vacancies across departments and faculties. Academic postings are published at the faculty level and aggregated at queensu.ca/provost/faculty-recruitment along with the institution's equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and accessibility (EDIIA) statements that accompany every search. PSAC 901 postings for teaching and research assistantships are routed through the departmental graduate offices and the SOLUS student system. The university runs a generic careers provider rather than a single vendor ATS across the whole institution, so expect different posting layouts between faculties.

  3. 3
    Create one candidate profile and reuse it across applications

    Create one candidate profile and reuse it across applications. Although faculty and staff postings use different back-end systems, within the staff careers portal you can apply to multiple positions from one profile, and within a specific faculty's academic search site you can usually reuse uploaded materials across several searches in the same cycle. Upload an ATS-readable PDF CV or .docx, then correct any parsed fields by hand. Canadian date formats (DD Month YYYY), Ontario postal codes, and Indigenous organisation names sometimes confuse generic parsers.

  4. 4
    For faculty and research-track roles, assemble the full dossier the posting asks

    For faculty and research-track roles, assemble the full dossier the posting asks for before you open the application. Tenure-track postings typically require a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research statement, teaching dossier or teaching philosophy statement, evidence of teaching effectiveness (course evaluations, sample syllabi), a statement on contributions to equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and accessibility, and three to five confidential letters of reference sent directly by referees. Some Faculty of Health Sciences and Smith School of Business searches also require a statement on scholarship of clinical practice or a research-funding track record in dollars and source agency. Queen's takes the EDIIA statement seriously; a one-line platitude is read as a red flag, and a thoughtful substantive statement is a differentiator.

  5. 5
    For staff roles, tailor the cover letter to the specific competencies listed in

    For staff roles, tailor the cover letter to the specific competencies listed in the posting. Queen's staff postings enumerate required and preferred qualifications in a structured list, and the short-listing committee scores applications against that list. A generic cover letter that does not address the enumerated competencies will not advance. Reference the relevant collective agreement or classification grid (USW, CUPE, Management and Professional, Research Support) if you know the posting sits within one, and state your salary expectations within the posted grid range.

  6. 6
    Answer the self-identification and equity questions honestly and completely

    Answer the self-identification and equity questions honestly and completely. Under Canadian federal and Ontario provincial law and the university's own EDIIA framework, Queen's collects voluntary self-identification data including Indigenous identity (First Nations status or non-status, Metis, Inuit), racialised identity, disability, 2SLGBTQ+ identity, and gender. Several searches, particularly Indigenous-targeted faculty searches and equity-targeted leadership searches, restrict eligibility or preference by self-identification. Misrepresenting identity is both a career-ending violation and a serious breach of trust with the community whose positions are being created.

  7. 7
    Expect a recruiter or search-committee-chair screen within two to six weeks for

    Expect a recruiter or search-committee-chair screen within two to six weeks for shortlisted applications, longer for faculty searches. Staff searches typically move in three to eight weeks from posting close to offer. Faculty searches routinely run from September or October posting through a March or April campus visit and a May or June offer, with a 1 July start date aligned to the Canadian academic year. Tri-Agency grant-funded research positions follow grant timelines, which are often tighter.

  8. 8
    Prepare for a campus visit or a multi-round virtual interview

    Prepare for a campus visit or a multi-round virtual interview. Faculty searches almost always include a two-day campus visit with a research talk (job talk, typically 45 to 50 minutes plus Q and A), a teaching demonstration in a representative undergraduate course, one-on-one meetings with the search committee, the department head, the dean or associate dean, graduate students, and sometimes a community partner where the role is Indigenous-facing or community-engaged. Staff interviews run as competency-based panels of two to four interviewers with structured questions and a standard scoring rubric. For leadership and senior management roles, expect a final-stage conversation with the Provost, Vice-Principal, or Principal depending on the level.

  9. 9
    If you are applying to Bader College in East Sussex, UK, read the secondary post

    If you are applying to Bader College in East Sussex, UK, read the secondary posting language carefully. Bader College roles are Queen's University positions contractually but sit in the United Kingdom operationally, which means UK right-to-work and visa considerations apply alongside the Queen's collective agreement framework. The UK side of the institution is small and the hiring cycle is tight, so timely communication with the Bader College human resources contact is important.

  10. 10
    Negotiate within the collective agreement framework where applicable

    Negotiate within the collective agreement framework where applicable. Faculty offers are negotiated on starting salary step within the QUFA grid, a startup research package (for research-intensive appointments), moving and relocation allowance, spousal or partner hiring support where applicable, sabbatical eligibility clock, and teaching load in the first year. Staff offers are generally negotiated on starting step within the classified grid, vacation accrual, professional development allowance, and hybrid-work arrangements. Queen's Ontario pension plan (through CAAT's DBplus or Queen's own pension depending on classification) is a substantial component of total compensation; factor it into the comparison. Counter-offering is professional and expected; pushing for US R1 or private-equity compensation will end the conversation politely and quickly.

Resume Tips for Queen University

recommended

For faculty positions, structure the CV along Canadian academic conventions: con

For faculty positions, structure the CV along Canadian academic conventions: contact information, current appointment, prior appointments, education, refereed publications (with author order preserved and corresponding-author marks where applicable), book chapters, conference presentations, research funding held (principal investigator, co-investigator, amount in CAD, source agency, dates), teaching history with course codes and enrolments, graduate supervision (completed and in-progress), service to department, faculty, university, and profession, and equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and accessibility contributions. A North American academic CV is long by design; do not compress it to two pages.

recommended

For staff positions, keep the CV or resume to two pages, use a clean single-colu

For staff positions, keep the CV or resume to two pages, use a clean single-column layout, and mirror the language of the posting's required and preferred qualifications. Queen's staff searches score against the enumerated list. If the posting says 'demonstrated experience with PeopleSoft Finance,' write 'PeopleSoft Finance' verbatim in the relevant bullet, not 'Oracle ERP' or 'financial systems.'

recommended

Quantify outcomes in Canadian dollars, student FTEs, research-grant amounts, or

Quantify outcomes in Canadian dollars, student FTEs, research-grant amounts, or operational metrics appropriate to the sector. A bullet that reads 'Managed budget' is invisible. 'Managed CAD 4.2M operating budget across three academic units, reduced year-over-year overspend from 6 percent to under 1 percent across two fiscal years through rolling forecasts' is the level of specificity search committees read.

recommended

State your relationship to Indigenous communities, if any, honestly and carefull

State your relationship to Indigenous communities, if any, honestly and carefully. If you are an Indigenous scholar or practitioner, name the nation, community, or territory you come from or are accountable to, in the form used by that community. If you are a non-Indigenous applicant working in partnership with Indigenous communities, describe the nature of the relationship (community-approved research, co-authorship with Indigenous scholars, named partnership agreements) rather than claiming identity or affinity you do not hold.

recommended

Spell in Canadian English consistently

Spell in Canadian English consistently. organisation or organization is tolerated but mixing is sloppy; defence, centre, behaviour, programme (for a scheduled series of events) or program (for a curriculum or software) in the conventional Canadian distinctions. Mixing US and UK spellings inside a single document signals inattention.

recommended

List qualifications with the awarding institution, country, and date

List qualifications with the awarding institution, country, and date. PhD in Economics, University of Toronto, 2018. CPA, CPA Ontario, 2014. Registered Nurse, College of Nurses of Ontario, 2016. For Indigenous language, traditional knowledge, and community-based credentials, describe them on the terms of the community rather than forcing them into a Western credential format.

recommended

For Smith School of Business and professional-programme roles, state AACSB, EQUI

For Smith School of Business and professional-programme roles, state AACSB, EQUIS, or AMBA accreditation experience and any named executive education, MBA, or specialised master programme leadership. Teaching evaluation scores in decile or quartile form are meaningful; raw Likert means without context are not.

recommended

For Faculty of Health Sciences clinical roles, state your clinical licence and r

For Faculty of Health Sciences clinical roles, state your clinical licence and regulatory body (College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, College of Nurses of Ontario, College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario), your hospital privileges at Kingston Health Sciences Centre or Providence Care, and your scope of practice. Research-only roles do not require clinical licensure; clinician-scientist postings require both.

recommended

For research-technical and engineering roles, state the funding source and Tri-A

For research-technical and engineering roles, state the funding source and Tri-Agency acknowledgement lines on projects you led or supported. NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC, CFI, Mitacs, and the Ontario Research Fund are the agencies whose names Queen's research offices care about. Industry sponsorships and Canada First Research Excellence Fund awards carry their own signalling weight.

recommended

Keep file names clean and consistent

Keep file names clean and consistent. Surname_Forename_CV_2026.pdf, Surname_Forename_ResearchStatement_2026.pdf, Surname_Forename_TeachingDossier_2026.pdf. Avoid spaces, draft markers, version numbers, and personal identifiers that should not be in a file name.

ATS System: Queen's University Careers Portal (generic careers provider, faculty-specific academic recruitment systems, and SOLUS student-employment system)

Queen's University does not operate a single vendor ATS across every hiring stream. Staff and non-academic postings are consolidated at careers.queensu.ca and queensu.ca/humanresources/careers through a generic careers provider that supports structured applicant profiles, attachment uploads, pre-screening questions, and self-identification capture for the federal and Ontario equity frameworks. Faculty and academic postings are administered at the faculty level under the governance of the Queen's University Faculty Association collective agreement and the Provost's faculty recruitment guidelines; they typically use faculty-specific online submission systems that accept cover letters, CVs, research statements, teaching dossiers, EDIIA statements, and confidential referee letters submitted directly. PSAC 901 teaching assistantships and research assistantships are advertised and administered through the SOLUS student system and departmental graduate offices. For candidates, this means the application experience varies by posting: staff roles behave like a conventional enterprise careers portal, faculty roles behave like a curated academic job market, and student-employment roles behave like an internal university system. The candidate-facing instructions on each posting are authoritative; follow them specifically rather than assuming a cross-posting pattern. All streams collect voluntary self-identification data under Canadian federal employment-equity law and Ontario's equity and human-rights framework; these fields are confidential, not used in initial screening, and used by the institution for aggregate reporting and for equity-targeted searches where relevant. Queen's communicates application status through email and the candidate portal; there is no universal instant-feedback loop, and silence between posting close and interview can extend to several weeks, particularly for faculty searches.

  • Use a single-column, ATS-friendly PDF or .docx for the base CV. Avoid tables, text boxes, headers and footers, and multi-column designs. For faculty dossiers, PDF is the expected format and preserves formatting across platforms.
  • Complete every structured field the staff portal asks for, including employment history, education, certifications, and self-identification. Silent or skipped fields are sometimes used as a tiebreaker at first sift.
  • Mirror the posting's enumerated required and preferred qualifications verbatim in the cover letter and CV. Queen's staff short-listing committees score applications against that list.
  • For faculty searches, submit the EDIIA statement as a substantive standalone document, not a paragraph inside the cover letter. A strong EDIIA statement reflects on concrete actions, commitments, and accountability rather than general values.
  • Send confidential referee letters through the designated system or directly to the search committee chair at the email specified in the posting. Do not upload them to the candidate-facing portal unless the posting specifically permits it.
  • Save files with clean, consistent names. Surname_Forename_CV_2026.pdf. Avoid version numbers, draft markers, and dates of birth in file names.
  • Apply within the posted close date. Queen's searches rarely accept late applications, and for faculty searches the close date is often aligned to committee review meetings.
  • If you applied to Queen's previously and the search closed without an offer, you can apply to future postings without prejudice. Update the CV materially before resubmitting to the same unit.
  • Confirm right to work in Canada or UK (for Bader College) in the screening fields honestly. Queen's holds a sponsor profile through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for eligible faculty positions but does not sponsor every role.

Interview Culture

Interviews at Queen's are collegial, structured, and deliberate in a way that reflects the institution's Scottish Presbyterian founding culture, the governance weight of the QUFA collective agreement on academic searches, and the small-city community that expects colleagues to integrate rather than merely visit. The pace is measured; the bar is high on scholarly or professional substance, evidence of contribution to the community, and cultural fit; the experience is rarely adversarial. A typical faculty tenure-track search runs across four to six months from posting close to offer. After an initial long-list screen by the search committee, five to eight candidates are invited for a first-round interview, which may be held virtually (increasingly common since 2020) and is typically a 45 to 60 minute conversation with the full search committee covering research agenda, teaching experience, fit with the department's strategic plan, and reflections on equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and accessibility. Three to four of those candidates are then invited for a two-day campus visit. The campus visit is the pivotal stage and includes: a public research talk (a 45 to 50 minute job talk with 10 to 20 minutes of Q and A, open to the department and often to graduate students from the broader faculty); a teaching demonstration in a representative undergraduate course; one-on-one meetings with search committee members, the department head, the dean or associate dean, graduate students, and in some cases community or Indigenous partners; a chalk talk or research-facilities conversation for experimental and research-intensive appointments; a meal with search committee members on each evening; and a formal meeting with the dean or associate dean to discuss terms, startup, and expectations. The offer decision is made by the department, recommended to the dean, reviewed by the provost's office, and confirmed by the Principal for senior appointments. A typical staff search runs across three to eight weeks. After short-listing against the posting's enumerated qualifications, candidates are invited to a competency-based panel interview of two to four interviewers drawn from the hiring manager, the human-resources partner for the unit, a peer colleague, and sometimes a client-side stakeholder. The panel uses structured questions with a scoring rubric. Depending on the role, a second round may include a skills test (Excel, writing sample, systems demonstration), a presentation, or a meeting with a senior leader. Final-stage reference checks are conducted by the hiring manager or HR partner directly. Questions to expect include: 'Walk us through how your research agenda connects to the strategic priorities of this department,' 'Describe a course you have taught that you are most proud of and how you assessed whether students met the learning outcomes,' 'Tell us about a time you worked in genuine partnership with an Indigenous community or equity-deserving community and what you learned from it,' 'How do you approach EDIIA in a research group or team you lead,' 'What does the U15 or AAU research-university context mean for how you choose research questions or collaborations,' and 'Why Queen's and why Kingston rather than Toronto, McGill, UBC, or a US peer at this point in your career.' The 'why us and why Kingston' question is taken seriously and a generic answer will not pass. A strong answer references a specific programme, research cluster, or community partnership; engages honestly with the Ontario fiscal context and the institution's current restructuring; and explains why the candidate is motivated to contribute during a constrained period rather than chase a better-funded posting at a peer. Dress code is business or business-casual for a campus visit and for any senior leadership interview. Smart-casual is acceptable for many staff panels and for technology and operations roles. Faculty job talks and teaching demonstrations expect the candidate to be professionally dressed without being formal beyond the norms of the discipline; clinical Faculty of Health Sciences interviews in hospital settings follow hospital dress codes. References and background checks are conducted by the hiring manager or HR partner for staff roles, and by the search committee chair for faculty roles. Faculty references are typically contacted before the campus visit or between campus visit and offer. Background checks for roles working with vulnerable populations (clinical, residence, student services) include a vulnerable-sector criminal record check. Credential verification and, for senior roles, sanctions screening are standard. Misrepresentation about appointments, publications, funding held, regulatory status, or Indigenous identity is a dealbreaker at any stage.

What Queen University Looks For

  • Substantive scholarly or professional track record relevant to the unit, evidenced with outputs (publications with venue and author position, research funding held with agency and amount in CAD, teaching evaluations with context, operational metrics in the staff equivalent).
  • Genuine engagement with the university's EDIIA framework and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, evidenced by concrete actions, commitments, and accountability rather than general values statements. A thoughtful EDIIA statement is one of the highest-signal documents in a faculty dossier.
  • Demonstrated ability to teach and mentor undergraduate and graduate students in a residential Canadian university context. Teaching evaluations, course design, curriculum leadership, and graduate supervision completions carry real weight.
  • Fit with the Queen's U15 and AAU research-university context. Candidates whose work is scaled to a research-intensive peer group (Toronto, McGill, UBC, Alberta, McMaster in Canada; AAU publics and strong research privates in the US) and who can articulate that scale credibly are advantaged.
  • Readiness to operate in a unionised Canadian workplace with a QUFA or CUPE or PSAC or ONA collective agreement, depending on the role. Candidates from non-unionised or US-private backgrounds who do not understand that structure sometimes misread the hiring process and the post-hire working environment.
  • Authentic engagement with Indigenous partnership commitments. For any role touching curriculum, student experience, community engagement, or research with Indigenous communities, the institution expects concrete grounding in Indigenous methodologies, community-approved research protocols, and the specific partnerships Queen's has built with Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and other Indigenous communities.
  • Resilience and judgement in a fiscally constrained environment. Ontario's tuition freeze, the federal international-study-permit cap, and pension and benefit cost pressure have reduced discretionary spending across Canadian universities. Candidates who can deliver outcomes with stable or shrinking budgets are weighted favourably.
  • Strong written and spoken English. The institution is English-primary, interviews and correspondence are conducted in English, and scholarly and professional writing is evaluated at the level of a selective research university. French, Indigenous languages, and other additional languages are advantageous for specific roles without being general requirements.
  • Comfort with a small-city, residential-campus, four-season environment. Candidates whose life and family plans are compatible with Kingston as a primary residence integrate faster than those treating Kingston as a commuter outpost from Toronto or Ottawa.
  • Willingness to engage with an institution mid-transition. Queen's is responding to Indigenous reconciliation obligations, Ontario fiscal constraints, and a reshaping research landscape simultaneously. A constructive attitude toward the current work of the institution is read as cultural fit; a dismissive or purely transactional attitude is read as a misfit.
  • Right to work in Canada is required for Canadian postings and right to work in the United Kingdom for Bader College postings. Queen's sponsors work permits for eligible faculty and specialist staff positions under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's streams but not for every role; confirm eligibility with the search committee chair or HR partner early.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Queen's University use?
Queen's does not use a single vendor ATS across the whole institution. Staff and non-academic postings are consolidated through a generic careers provider at careers.queensu.ca and queensu.ca/humanresources/careers. Faculty and academic postings are administered at the faculty level under the governance of the QUFA collective agreement and the Provost's faculty recruitment guidelines, typically using faculty-specific online submission systems that accept research statements, teaching dossiers, EDIIA statements, and confidential referee letters. PSAC 901 teaching and research assistantships are advertised through the SOLUS student system and departmental graduate offices.
Is Queen's University a U15 and AAU member?
Yes. Queen's is a member of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and is one of only three Canadian members of the Association of American Universities, along with the University of Toronto and McGill University. These memberships are structural signals that the institution competes at the research-intensive tier with the strongest public and private research universities in North America.
Who is the Principal of Queen's University?
Patrick Deane has served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor since 1 July 2019. He previously served as President and Vice-Chancellor of McMaster University for a decade and earlier as Provost at Queen's itself. His tenure has been defined by Indigenous reconciliation commitments, Ontario fiscal constraints, and the repositioning of the research portfolio.
Where are Queen's University's campuses?
The main campus is in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. A secondary west campus and the Innovation Park research corridor extend west of the historic core. The Faculty of Education is based at the Duncan McArthur Hall campus. Bader College operates at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, United Kingdom, as the university's residential UK teaching centre.
Which unions represent staff at Queen's?
Faculty, librarians, and archivists are represented by the Queen's University Faculty Association (QUFA). Non-academic staff across administrative, technical, and service functions are represented by several Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals, principally CUPE 229, CUPE 1302, and CUPE 254. Teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and postdoctoral fellows are represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) through PSAC Local 901. Registered nurses at Student Wellness Services and in clinical teaching roles are represented by the Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA).
Does Queen's University sponsor work permits?
Queen's sponsors work permits for eligible faculty and specialist staff positions through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's employer-specific streams, including under the Labour Market Impact Assessment exemptions available to publicly funded post-secondary institutions. Sponsorship is decided role by role and is not the default. For Bader College positions in the United Kingdom, UK right-to-work rules apply separately. Confirm sponsorship with the search committee chair or HR partner at the screening call rather than assuming.
How long does the Queen's hiring process take?
Faculty tenure-track searches typically run four to six months from posting close to offer, with the academic year start of 1 July as the conventional start date. Staff searches typically run three to eight weeks from posting close to offer. PSAC 901 student-employment postings follow departmental graduate-office timelines aligned with academic terms.
What is the impact of the federal international student permit cap on hiring?
The federal cap on international study permits announced in January 2024 and tightened through 2025 has reduced the international-student revenue base that Canadian universities including Queen's had relied upon to offset the Ontario domestic tuition freeze. The downstream effect on hiring is a structurally constrained budget environment, with vacancies held open in some units, programme reviews, and careful prioritisation of new positions. Principal communications have been unusually candid about the fiscal pressure; candidates should read the most recent Principal's report and the annual budget presentation before interviewing.
How does Queen's approach Indigenous reconciliation in hiring?
Queen's has a formal Indigenous inclusion framework (Extending the Rafters) and in 2024 to 2025 formalised an Anishinaabe partnership with local First Nations. The institution runs Indigenous-targeted faculty and staff searches that restrict eligibility or preference to candidates who self-identify as First Nations (status or non-status), Metis, or Inuit. It also embeds EDIIA commitments in every faculty search through a required statement on contributions to equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and accessibility. For non-Indigenous candidates working in partnership with Indigenous communities, the institution expects concrete grounding in community-approved research protocols and Indigenous methodologies.
What is Bader College and how does it fit into Queen's hiring?
Bader College is Queen's University's residential teaching centre at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, United Kingdom, made possible by the gift of the late Alfred and Isabel Bader. It delivers first-year and upper-year international-study terms within the Queen's degree structure. Bader College roles are Queen's University positions contractually but sit in the United Kingdom operationally, which means UK right-to-work and visa considerations apply alongside the Queen's collective agreement framework.
How does Queen's pay compared to peers?
Compensation is competitive within the Canadian U15 peer group and below US R1 private-university, US private-industry, and management-consulting levels. Faculty salaries are governed by the QUFA collective agreement grid with annual step progression. Staff salaries are governed by the relevant collective agreement or Management and Professional grid. The pension benefit (through CAAT's DBplus or the Queen's pension plan depending on classification), a professional development allowance, sabbatical eligibility for faculty, and the Kingston cost of living relative to Toronto or Vancouver are material components of total compensation.
Is the hiring process bilingual in French and English?
Queen's is an English-primary institution. Interviews and correspondence are conducted in English. French language ability is valued and sometimes required for specific roles (Modern Languages faculty, Government Relations, certain Indigenous engagement and clinical roles) but is not a general requirement. Candidates whose primary academic or professional language is French can expect to conduct most of the hiring process in English.

Open Positions

Queen University currently has 1 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 1 open positions at Queen University

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources

  1. Queen's University Official Website —
  2. Queen's University Human Resources Careers —
  3. Queen's University Provost Faculty Recruitment —
  4. Principal Patrick Deane Office —
  5. U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities —
  6. Association of American Universities Members —
  7. Queen's University Faculty Association (QUFA) —
  8. PSAC Local 901 Queen's University —
  9. CUPE Locals at Queen's University —
  10. Ontario Nurses' Association —
  11. Smith School of Business —
  12. Queen's Faculty of Health Sciences and School of Medicine —
  13. Bader College at Herstmonceux Castle —
  14. Queen's University Indigenous Initiatives (Extending the Rafters) —
  15. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action —
  16. Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada Global Skills Strategy —
  17. Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities Funding Framework —
  18. SNOLAB (Queen's-led Nobel Prize 2015) —
  19. Kingston Health Sciences Centre —