Medical devices, implants and hospital equipment. A small job market, and often a stepping stone to medicine or grad school.
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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 $58,000 at the lower end to about $171,000 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.
$37,000 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
$58,000
Upper end
$171,000
Job Bank groups biomedical with other specialised engineers, so the national numbers look like the other disciplines: a median of $50 an hour, about $104,000 a year. Regulatory affairs and quality managers at device companies, and senior clinical engineers at large hospitals, sit toward the top.
$58.97 an hour
The median in Alberta for the group, the highest in Canada
British Columbia ($52.88) and Ontario ($51.14) follow, and Prince Edward Island is lowest at $43.53. There are fewer entry-level device jobs than graduates, so many take a mechanical, quality or software job first.
Roughly, all in
$37,000 to $70,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Engineering tuition is higher than most degrees, which is why the four year range is so wide: the low end is an in province public program, the high end a costlier school. On top of tuition sit the engineer in training registration, the professional practice exam and the first annual licence fee once you qualify. That licence fee then repeats every year for your whole career. If you carry on to a master's or to medicine, add two to four more years of tuition to these numbers.
Engineering tuition is higher than most degrees. If you continue to medicine or a master's, add 2 to 4 more years of tuition on top.
Hospital pension
Clinical engineers in Ontario hospitals join the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, one of the best in the country.
Health and dental
Stock options
At device startups, in place of a pension.
Licence fees paid
Most employers cover your annual P.Eng (professional engineer) dues.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Degree, then one of three doors: industry, medicine or grad school.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry and usually Biology. Ontario programs usually want the 80s.
Accredited biomedical 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. Mechanical or electrical engineering with a biomedical option is just as accepted by employers.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register with your provincial regulator and work under a licensed engineer at a device company or hospital.
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. Or skip it: a master's, PhD or medical school are the other common next steps.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required.
Chemistry
Required.
Biology
Required or strongly recommended for this discipline.
Only licensed professional engineers can use the title engineer or sign off on designs. Each province has a regulator: PEO (Professional Engineers Ontario), APEGA (the Alberta association) and EGBC (Engineers and Geoscientists BC) are the big three. Licences transfer between provinces. Medical devices are also regulated separately by Health Canada, which licenses every device sold in Canada, so much of the job is regulatory paperwork rather than stamped drawings.
Dedicated biomedical programs are newer and smaller than other disciplines:
Ontario
Waterloo, Toronto (engineering science, biomedical option), McMaster, Guelph, Toronto Metropolitan University, Carleton, Ottawa.
Quebec
McGill (bioengineering), Polytechnique Montréal.
West
UBC (University of British Columbia), Calgary.
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 biomedical engineering
About 4 years
Génie biomédical (biomedical engineering) at Polytechnique Montréal, 120 credits in French, or Bioengineering at McGill in English. Or a mechanical or electrical degree with a health 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.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
A full génie biomédical (biomedical engineering) bachelor's, 120 credits, accredited.
McGill University, in English
Bioengineering is one of McGill's most competitive engineering programs. Arrive with all or nearly all the CEGEP (public college) prerequisite courses done.
ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure), in French
A health technologies concentration added to electrical, mechanical or automated production engineering: 5 courses plus an internship in the health sector.
Université de Sherbrooke, in French
Mechanical engineering with a bio-engineering concentration, chosen after the third term.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Regulatory affairs
Getting devices approved by Health Canada and the FDA (the US drug and device regulator). Paperwork-heavy, and needed for every device sold in Canada.
Quality systems
Knowing the medical device quality standard, ISO 13485 (the international quality standard for device makers), inside out.
Software and data skills
Imaging software, wearables and hospital systems. Most device growth is in software.
A master's degree
Common in this field. Many design and research roles expect one.
Co-op at a device company or hospital
The market is small, so contacts from co-op matter more than in other disciplines.
A high GPA
If medical school is the plan, engineering marks are harder to keep high than in life sciences. Plan for it.
Volunteering in a hospital
You learn how nurses and doctors actually use equipment.
SolidWorks and Python
Device design and data analysis.
A lot of biomedical engineering students plan on medical school. It can work: the degree is respected and the problem solving helps with the MCAT (medical school admission test). But admissions committees look mostly at GPA, and an engineering course load makes a high GPA harder. If medicine is the only goal, a life sciences degree is the safer route. If you want a real fallback career, engineering is.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
At a device company: testing a prototype, writing the design and risk documents Health Canada requires, and meetings with clinicians who will use the product. At a hospital: evaluating equipment before it is bought, investigating incidents, and planning replacements for an imaging suite. In research: lab experiments, data analysis and grant reports. Paperwork is a bigger share of the day than in most engineering jobs.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
John Hopps, an electrical engineer at the National Research Council in Ottawa, built the first external cardiac pacemaker in 1950. Wearable implanted versions came later, but the idea started here.
Health Canada sorts medical devices into Class I (a tongue depressor) up to Class IV (a heart valve). The higher the class, the more testing and paperwork a biomedical engineer has to produce before it can be sold.
Most Canadian medical device companies are small, and they cluster around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. That is why so many biomedical grads end up in mechanical, software or quality jobs, or in medical school.
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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