A job where the city is your office and being sociable is your key performance indicator
Apply now for a career-track role hosting international, domestic and local guests in our incredible city. Co-owners Hugo and John have guided for a combined 25 years, and they built the role they wish had existed when they started.
Year round. Salary + entitlements, and a (mostly) predictable roster.
Apply now5,000+ five-star reviews
10 years in operation
7 people on the guide team last year
Centre Place, on a Tuesday.
Since 2017
Ten years of touring
Same city, same meeting point, a lot of different people holding the umbrella.
January 2017
Our first tour departs, under our original name Walks 101.
April 2018
Pilar guiding our Spanish-language tours.
January 2020
Our guide team.
March 2020
One of our final large-group tours. Post-COVID we renamed and capped groups at 12.
March 2026
Guide Simon leading a food tour.
Why this job is different
Four things guiding jobs almost never offer
We took our experience as tour guides and tried to improve on the biggest complaints of the job.
A roster you can plan your life around
You work the same days every week. Not a rotating pattern, not a text on Thursday night with work assignments for that weekend. The same days, written into your contract.
Hours move a little within those days, because we offer tours between 8:30am and 10pm (with the majority of tours operating between 11am and 6pm).
A fixed annual salary with room to grow
We’re looking to build a team who will build our business for years, not weeks. That means paying a fair wage and promising growth opportunities.
We’re a fast-growing company and hoping to hire folks who will grow into their next role within a year of starting.
Freedom to do the job the way you work best
We don’t believe in scripts, we would prefer to train you on the core skills of any tour host, then let you make the experience your own.
We would much rather you take your guests to your favourite cafe and introduce them to your favourite barista rather than go to a company-mandated stop.
A core part of our growth
This is a job for someone who becomes a fundamental part of the business, not a gun for hire. We’re looking for someone who is eager to jump in and help take Depot into its next phase.
For a successful applicant, that could look like attending future trade shows, managing our Reservations department, or leading expansion to new destinations.
The actual job
Don't call it tour guiding
Let’s be honest – calling this role “curator” rather than “tour guide” is a bit strange.
But we feel it best reflects the actual job. Think of leading a Depot Adventure in the same way you make dinner on a given night: You don’t reach for a recipe card, you open the fridge and consider what’s in front of you, what’s in season, who you’re cooking for, and compose something from that.
Knowing the ingredients is table stakes – in this metaphore, that’s knowing what Melbourne is all about.
The skill we’re hiring for is the ability to know which ingredient to reach for, in what order, for the occasion and group in front of you.
An Experiences Curator works the same way. Before it starts, you’ve read the booking. Who is in the group? Where they’re from? Are they a solo traveller who wants to disappear into the city, or a corporate team who need to warm up to each other first? A family? A group of retirees with a sharp sense of humour? What time of day is it? How’s the weather? What’s on in town this week?
The experience gets built from those ingredients, live, every departure. Melbourne is too alive to be reduced to a fixed menu.
It starts before the meeting point and carries on after the last laneway. A message before, presence throughout, a follow-up after. Hospitality as a responsibility to the people you serve and the city you represent, with every departure a chance to do it better than the last.
How we work
Twelve people at a time, in somebody else's neighbourhood
Depot owns no venue and no vehicle. Every bar, distillery, market stall and kitchen on our experiences is independently owned, most of them owner-operated.
The introduction to the owner is the experience we’re delivering on. In the age of AI, knowing things about a city isn’t special. It’s trading on the relationships, genuine relationships that we have built over years, that leave lasting impressions on our guests. And we’re asking you to be a part of that experience.
This brings us to why we are hiring for a permanent, ongoing position. If the thing that we are trading on in our experiences is relationships, we need to invest in our team for long enough that they can build those relationships over time.
That’s not something that can be delegated. We’ve learned that in our 10 years of operation.
So we want someone with strong feelings about where to get a cocktail, a coffee or a feed in this city. Or the appetite to go and find out by walking into places and introducing yourself, which is how every one of these relationships started.
Degraves Street. The trader is doing the talking, and the guide is the reason he is.
The week itself
A laneway in the rain, a bar courtyard at nine at night
The job changes every day. The only constant is that a group of strangers is depending on you to make it good.
What the week looks like
Full time or part time, and you tell us which
Same job, same rate, same standing in the team. What changes is how much of the week it takes up. Anything from about half time upwards works, so say what suits you and a roster gets built around it, including around school drop-offs, study, or anything else that is fixed in your life.
Where this goes
A role that will grow with you
Depot is a small business, and we prefer all hands on deck to siloing off areas of responsibility. Bookkeepers, accountants and lawyers come in when they are needed. Everything else is the team.
So this is a role that helps keep the lights on. Answering customer phone calls and emails. The occasional social post. Tidying up around the office when it needs it.
The opportunities to grow here are real. We are looking for someone who spends their first year focused on being the best host they can be, while keeping an eye out for the openings.
Sales
Corporate and private work, reseller relationships, and the conversations that turn an enquiry into a booking.
Marketing
Four products, seven days a week, and a city that photographs itself. Somebody should be catching it.
Operations
Rostering, product design, trader relationships, and the things that make a tour run on time.
Accounts
Reconciliation, supplier invoices, and the reporting that tells us which departures actually pay.
The money
What it pays
Unusual for this work, and said plainly rather than discussed at the third interview.
$70,000
Base salary for a 38-hour week, plus 12% superannuation. Part time is the same rate, pro rata. Paid monthly.
The first ninety days
Nobody gets thrown at a group on day one
Training runs in stages, and you always know which one you are in.
Training week
Full time, paid, off the tools. The city, the products, the systems, and the standard you are working to.
On tour with an experienced Curator
You lead sections while they hold the group, so you get to make mistakes with a safety net under you.
Your own departures, with support on call
The tour is yours. Someone is reachable if you need them, and there is a proper debrief after each one.
Review
A formal sit-down on how it has gone, what you want next, and where the role goes from here.
Before you ask
The questions everybody has
Do I need tour guiding experience?
No. Depot trains for the industry knowledge and the city. What can’t be trained in a fortnight is reading a group, genuine warmth, and being comfortable in front of twelve strangers. Hospitality, teaching, events, performance and retail all produce people who do this well.
Do I need to have grown up in Melbourne?
No. The founder started this company because he was an experienced tour guide from overseas who wanted to give himself work. Hiring only born and bred Melburnians would be hypocritical.
What we look for is a unique perspective on the city. Someone who can speak competently not just about the great neighbourhoods, but about what to order at which restaurant, and who to talk to while they’re there.
Is it really permanent, or permanent until summer ends?
Permanent. Depot has run seven days a week year round for ten years and has been an employer rather than a contractor roster since 2017.
I have fixed commitments. Daycare, study, something else.
Apply. Rosters have been built around exactly these before. It will mean some consistent out-of-business-hours work, but the days themselves are fixed, which makes this easier to plan around than most jobs rather than harder.
How physical is it?
You’re on your feet outdoors for several hours at a stretch, in whatever Melbourne is doing that day. Walking pace, not hiking. If that’s a question for you, raise it early and it gets talked through properly.
What happens after I send the details?
Applications are read as they come in, and everyone who applies gets an answer by email. We hire in rounds, so if the timing is not right this time, you stay in the pool for the next one.
How to apply
Apply now
About ten minutes: a few questions, a short video introduction filmed on your phone, and your CV. We hire in rounds, so your application goes into the pool for our next round.