Aircraft, engines, satellites and flight simulators. Montreal is the hub, and only a handful of schools teach it.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $104,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $70,000 at the lower end to about $208,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$15,000 to $70,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a licence or registration before you can work.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$104,000
Lower end
$70,000
Upper end
$208,000
Job Bank's national median is $50 an hour, about $104,000 a year full time, with a low of $33.76 and a high of $100 an hour. Bombardier, Pratt and Whitney Canada and CAE (the flight simulator maker) in the Montreal area are the biggest employers.
$56.41 an hour
The median in Ontario, the highest in Canada
Manitoba ($48.49) is next. Quebec, where most of the jobs are, has a median of $47.60, and Alberta is lowest at $43.76.
Roughly, all in
$15,000 to $70,000
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 (24 months in Quebec), 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. Carleton and TMU (Toronto Metropolitan University) look for the high 80s.
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 (2 in Quebec)
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 (2 in Quebec)
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 and ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure) in Montreal, close to the aerospace cluster. Sherbrooke offers mechanical engineering with an aeronautics concentration.
Mechanical with an aerospace option
Toronto's engineering science program, McGill, Windsor, Manitoba and others. Employers accept this route.
Quebec students reach university after a 2 year CEGEP (public college) diploma, so the degree takes about 4 years, and the licence comes from the OIQ (Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the Quebec order of engineers) through its own program and exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Take Secondary V math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence, plus Secondary V chemistry and physics. All three are required for the Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies).
Science DEC at a CEGEP
2 years
The 2 year Science program (200.B1). In English at Dawson and the other English colleges. Engineering schools look for its calculus, physics and chemistry courses and your R score (the Quebec college ranking mark).
Bachelor's in aerospace engineering
4 to 5 years
120 credits, about 4 years, at Polytechnique Montréal or ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure) in French, or Concordia in English. Sherbrooke offers mechanical engineering with an aeronautics concentration.
Become a CPI (candidate to the engineering profession)
Before or right after graduating
Apply to the order once you have 60 university credits or your degree, $180. Joining the program costs $520 plus tax, half price within 6 months of graduating.
24 months of supervised work, then the exam
At least 2 years, at most 5
Work under an engineer you declare to the order. Paid internships done after 60 credits can count. Add 25 to 30 hours of online training ($345) and a multiple choice exam ($285, 60% to pass).
Show French, get the permit
End of the program
A Quebec high school diploma counts, even from an English school. Otherwise you pass a 3 hour exam of the Office québécois de la langue française (the Quebec French language office), at no charge. Then the order issues your permit.
Concordia University, in English
Aerospace Engineering, at least 120 credits. You pick aerodynamics and propulsion, structures and materials, or avionics and systems. Co-op work terms of 12 to 16 weeks are available.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
Génie aérospatial (aerospace engineering), 120 credits, with a required internship.
ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure), in French
Génie aérospatial (program 6522), split between downtown Montreal and the École nationale d'aérotechnique campus in Longueuil. Three paid 4 month internships are required.
Université de Sherbrooke, in French
Mechanical engineering with an aeronautical engineering concentration, 120 credits. The co-op version has 5 paid 4 month internships.
Starting from a technical DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
ÉTS admits graduates of Aerospace Engineering Technology (280.B0), Mechanical Engineering Technology (241.A0) and Composite Materials Technology (241.C0) directly, instead of the Science DEC.
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.
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 (British Columbia) 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, based in Longueuil, Quebec, has built more than 64,000 of a single small turboprop engine design since 1963. It is one of the most produced aircraft engines ever.
In 1959 the federal government cancelled the Avro Arrow, a Canadian-built supersonic jet fighter, and thousands of Avro workers lost their jobs. Within weeks about 25 of its engineers joined NASA (the US space agency), and they went on to work on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
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.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Engineers first, then the rest of the field. See every career in engineering.
Last checked October 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. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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