Aircraft, engines, satellites and flight simulators. Montreal is the hub, and only a handful of schools teach it.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Licensed (P.Eng)
$104,000
Engineer-in-training
$70,000
Senior or specialist
$208,000
Job Bank's national numbers put aerospace a little above mechanical engineering, and the top end is pulled up by senior specialists and managers. Bombardier, Pratt and Whitney Canada and CAE (the flight simulator maker) in the Montreal area set the going rate. Defence and space jobs pay about the same.
$65,000 to $75,000
EIT (engineer-in-training), straight out of school
Montreal salaries look lower than Toronto but rent is cheaper. Co-op students earn $20 to $28 an hour.
$100,000 to $140,000
Licensed engineer, 5 to 10 years in
Structural analysts, propulsion specialists and engineers with a Transport Canada design delegation can pass $150,000. Managers earn more.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a Quebec resident paying roughly $3,500 a year for a four year engineering degree, then the professional practice exam and the first licence fees. The high end is four years elsewhere in Canada at up to $17,000 a year. On top of tuition you pay EIT (engineer in training) dues for the three or four years of supervised work before licensing, then the annual P.Eng (professional engineer) licence. Tuition is a yearly figure, so multiply it by four before you compare routes.
Quebec residents pay about $3,000 to $4,000 a year at Polytechnique, Concordia and Sherbrooke. Out-of-province students pay more.
Pension
Defined-benefit at the older aircraft and engine makers and at the Canadian Space Agency. Matched savings at newer firms.
Union representation
Some engineering groups at Bombardier and Pratt and Whitney Canada are unionized.
Health and dental
Flight benefits
Airline and simulator employers sometimes offer discounted travel.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Degree, supervised experience, exam, licence.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics and Chemistry are required. Marks in the high 80s or above at most schools.
Accredited aerospace engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
A four-year Bachelor of Engineering or Applied Science at a school accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. Only a few schools offer aerospace as its own degree. Mechanical engineering with an aerospace option is the common alternative.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years
Register with your provincial regulator and work under a licensed engineer. Log your experience.
Professional practice exam
During your EIT (engineer-in-training) years
A law and ethics exam, taken during your training years.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After 4 years
Apply with your experience record and references. In Quebec the regulator is the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, and French is expected.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required. Forces, motion and fluids are the whole job.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
French
Not required for admission, but most of the jobs are in Montreal.
Only licensed professional engineers can use the title engineer or sign off on designs. Each province has a regulator: the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, PEO (Professional Engineers Ontario), APEGA (the Alberta association) and EGBC (Engineers and Geoscientists BC). Licences transfer between provinces. Aircraft designs also need Transport Canada approval, and experienced engineers can be delegated to approve designs on its behalf, which is a big career step.
Aerospace as its own degree is rare. These are the main programs:
Ontario
Carleton (Ottawa), Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson, in Toronto).
Quebec
Concordia, Polytechnique Montréal, Sherbrooke. All close to the Montreal aerospace cluster.
Mechanical with an aerospace option
Toronto's engineering science program, McGill, Windsor, Manitoba and others. Employers accept this route.
Things you don't need, but that help.
A master's degree
More common in aerospace than other disciplines. Many design and research roles expect one.
Transport Canada design delegation
Being trusted to approve designs on the regulator's behalf. Takes years, and it is the best paid technical track.
Security clearance
Defence work needs Canadian citizenship and a clearance. Fewer people qualify, so the pay is better.
Project Management Professional (PMP)
The usual route into managing programs and budgets.
French
The single biggest career booster if you want Montreal, where most of the jobs are.
Student rocketry, drone or aircraft design teams
Employers ask about them in every interview.
CATIA (the design software Bombardier and Airbus use)
Learn it before your first co-op.
A private pilot licence
Not needed, but it shows you understand what you are designing.
Canada's space industry is small but real. MDA (the company that built the Canadarm) in Brampton, Richmond BC and Montreal, the Canadian Space Agency near Montreal, and a few satellite startups hire aerospace engineers. Expect a few hundred openings a year across the whole country, so most people start in aircraft and move over.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Most aerospace engineers work on one small part of a large program: a wing bracket, an engine blade, a landing gear actuator. The day is analysis in simulation software, design reviews with a dozen other engineers, and writing the reports Transport Canada will read. Test engineers spend time in labs and on the flight line. Nobody designs a whole plane.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The robotic arm on the Space Shuttle was built in Canada and first flew in 1981. Canadarm2 has been assembling and repairing the International Space Station since 2001, and Canadarm3 is being built for the lunar Gateway station.
Pratt and Whitney Canada's small turboprop engine (the PT6), built in Longueuil, Quebec, since the 1960s, is one of the most produced aircraft engines ever. Tens of thousands are flying.
In 1959 the federal government cancelled the Avro Arrow, a Canadian-built supersonic jet fighter, and thousands of engineers lost their jobs overnight. Many went to the US and helped build the Apollo program.
CAE (the flight simulator maker), based in Montreal, builds the full-motion simulators that airlines around the world use to train pilots. A lot of that work is aerospace engineers writing flight models.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.