Roofer Jobs in Ontario: Who Is Hiring Right Now

Every building in Ontario has a roof, and every roof eventually fails. That single fact makes roofing one of the most reliable trades to chase work in, because the demand never really goes away. New houses need dried in, aging roofs need replaced, flat commercial membranes need torn off and redone, and leaks need chased down after every storm. The catch is the calendar. Roofing in Ontario runs on a short, brutal season, and the crews that will carry the summer get built in early spring. Miss that window and you are waiting on next year.

That is what this page is for. The live strip above pulls the employers who just pulled a building permit or won a contract that will need roofing work, so you can chase real, current jobs instead of scrolling stale boards. Below is the operator-level read on who hires roofers in Ontario, when they need you on the deck, and how to reach them before the crew is full and the season closes.

Who hires roofers in Ontario

Roofing is almost always subbed out or run by a dedicated roofing shop, so your employer is usually one of these:

• Residential roofing contractors. Steep-slope specialists doing asphalt shingles, metal, and the occasional slate or cedar. Fast pace, tight season, smaller crews of two to six. High volume of re-roofs plus new-build shingle work for builders.
• Commercial and industrial roofing contractors. Low-slope and flat work: built-up, modified bitumen torch-on, and single-ply TPO and EPDM. Bigger crews, more equipment, cranes and hoists, longer jobs on schools, warehouses, plazas, and institutional buildings. Generally the better-paid and more spec-driven lane.
• Restoration and re-roof specialists. Outfits that live off the replacement market. This is a huge, permit-light slice of the trade driven by the age of existing roofs, not by new construction, so it runs somewhat independent of the building cycle.
• Service and repair shops. Leak chasing, flashing repairs, patch work, and maintenance contracts on commercial buildings. Steadier through the shoulder seasons and a good place to keep hours when new work slows.
• General contractors and homebuilders, who either carry a roofing crew or, more often, run the same preferred roofer job after job on new builds and subdivisions.
• Developers on larger residential and mixed-use projects, who lock in a roofing sub at buyout.

On the feed, the two signals to watch are permits (a builder or owner pulled a permit, so a new roof or a re-roof is coming) and awards (a roofing or general contractor just won a job that will need a roofing crew).

The kinds of roofing work

Where you land shapes your pace, your pay, and the gear you learn. The main lanes:

• Residential steep-slope. Asphalt shingles are the bread and butter, with metal and standing-seam growing and slate and cedar as niche high-end work. Fast, physical, weather-sensitive, and hard on the body. Smaller crews, quick turnaround, lots of jobs in a season. The easiest lane to break into.
• Commercial low-slope and flat. Built-up roofing, modified bitumen torch-on, and single-ply membranes like TPO and EPDM. Bigger crews, more equipment, more setup, and more attention to detail on seams, penetrations, and drainage. Torch work carries real fire risk and its own precautions, so it is a skill worth having.
• Re-roof and restoration. Tear off the old system, inspect the deck, and install new. Driven by roof age, insurance claims, and storm damage rather than new construction. Some jobs pull a standalone permit, many do not, so a lot of this work never shows on a permit feed but keeps shops busy all season.
• Service and leak repair. Small, fast, year-round-ish work. Flashings, vents, valleys, and emergency patches. Less glamorous, but it fills the calendar in the shoulder months and teaches you to diagnose a roof, not just install one.

When roofers get the call on a build

Reading the build sequence is how you time your outreach. On a new build the roof is weather-critical and comes fairly early:

1. Framing and decking go up, and the structure is open to the sky.
2. Roofing goes on soon after, to dry in the building and protect everything underneath. This is why roofers get called earlier than most exterior finish trades: nothing inside can progress until the building is closed to weather.
3. Later flashing, tie-ins, and final details get finished as the rest of the envelope and trades wrap up.

So a fresh residential building permit signals a roofing crew will be needed once framing and decking are done, often a matter of weeks after the permit depending on how fast the builder moves. Treat any specific timing on the feed as an estimate, not a promise. A re-roof or restoration job runs on its own clock set by the condition of the old roof, and often needs a crew almost immediately once the owner signs. A commercial award means the roofing sub gets engaged at buyout and mobilizes on the project schedule, which can be weeks or months out.

Where the work is right now (and the season that rules it)

Roofing is the most seasonal trade on this site, and that fact should shape everything about how you chase it. The core window in Ontario runs roughly April to November. Crews fill fast in spring as the frost lifts and the backlog from winter breaks loose, and work compresses hard in the fall as everyone races to close roofs before the cold. Shingles need warmth to seal properly, so steep-slope work is genuinely limited by temperature. Torch-on and some membrane systems can push later into cold weather, which is why commercial flat crews often work later in the year than residential shinglers. Frozen decks, snow, and ice shut everything down, both for safety and for quality.

Geographically the demand is province-wide, because every roof in every town eventually needs replacing, and the re-roof market alone keeps shops busy far from any new-build boom. New-build roofing volume concentrates in the growth corridors: the GTA, Ottawa, Waterloo Region, Barrie and Simcoe County, Durham, and Hamilton and Niagara. Northern and eastern Ontario have thinner but often less-competitive markets, and a shorter season still.

The practical read: if you want a full summer of work, you get hired in late winter and early spring, before crews are set. Service, repair, and re-roof shops keep hiring through the season as jobs land, so those are your best bet if you are looking mid-summer or trying to hold hours into the fall.

How to get in front of these employers

The feed gives you the who. Here is how you turn that into work:

• Reach out directly. Once you have the employer name and location from a card, look them up and contact them. Lead with your 449A ticket if you hold it, or your willingness to learn and start as a labourer if you do not. Roofing takes on plenty of green hands who are fit and reliable.
• Lead with Working at Heights. This is not optional. Ontario requires an approved Working at Heights course before anyone works where fall protection is needed, and no roofing shop will put you on a deck without it. Having a current card, plus WHMIS, makes you hireable on the spot. Say it first.
• State your hours and level if you are an apprentice. If you are registered toward the 449A, give your level and hours logged. If you are not registered yet, say you want to be, because shops that register apprentices are exactly the ones building for the long season.
• Time it to the season, then to the signal. Reach out in late winter and early spring, before the crews fill. That timing is the whole game in this trade. Within the season, an employer who just pulled a permit or won a contract is staffing for that specific job, so hitting them in that window is how you land on the crew.

Getting qualified

If you are working toward the 449A Roofer Certificate of Qualification, that ticket plus a current Working at Heights card is what separates a labourer from a roofer employers compete for. Our Last Mile to Certificate of Qualification guide for roofers below walks the hours, the exam, and the path onto a crew, written from the apprentice's seat. Get the Working at Heights and WHMIS tickets first, because they are what get you on a roof at all.