Power grids, electronics and telecom. Where the electricity comes from and where the signals go.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Licensed (P.Eng)
$105,000
Engineer-in-training
$70,000
Senior or specialist
$165,000
Utilities such as Hydro One, BC Hydro and Hydro-Québec pay well and add a pension. Oil and gas and mining sites pay the most. Small electronics firms pay the least.
$65,000 to $78,000
EIT (engineer-in-training), straight out of school
Utility and nuclear graduate programs start near the top of that range. Co-op students earn $20 to $30 an hour.
$100,000 to $150,000
Licensed engineer, 5 to 10 years in
Power systems specialists (protection, high voltage, grid planning) are scarce and can pass $160,000. Nuclear refurbishment work in Ontario pays a premium.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Almost all of this is four years of engineering tuition, which runs higher than most degrees. The low end is in province tuition at a cheaper school plus the engineer in training registration, the professional practice exam, and the first year of the professional engineer licence. The high end is expensive tuition and the top of every fee. Paid co op terms at a utility or a contractor can cover a large part of the tuition, and these numbers do not subtract that.
Engineering tuition is higher than most degrees. Co-op terms at a utility can cover a large part of it.
Pension
Defined-benefit at Hydro One, BC Hydro, Hydro-Québec, Ontario Power Generation and municipal utilities.
Union representation
Engineers at Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation belong to the Society of United Professionals.
Health and dental
Stock and bonuses
At electronics and telecom companies instead of a pension.
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 electrical 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. You choose a stream in later years: power, electronics, communications or control.
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. Now you can seal drawings and take legal responsibility for designs.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required. Electrical is the most math-heavy engineering discipline.
Physics
Required. Electricity and magnetism units matter most.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
Computer science
Not required, but you will program microcontrollers in first year.
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 easily. Power and building electrical work almost always needs a stamp, so the licence matters more here than in electronics, where many engineers never bother.
Nearly every engineering school offers electrical. Some with strong ties to utilities or electronics:
Ontario
Waterloo, Toronto, McMaster, Queen's, Ottawa, Carleton, Western, Ontario Tech (close to the Darlington nuclear plant).
Quebec
McGill, Polytechnique Montréal, Concordia, Laval, Sherbrooke.
West
UBC (University of British Columbia), Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Manitoba.
Atlantic
Dalhousie, Memorial, New Brunswick.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Power systems and protection
Grid planning, substations and protective relays. Utilities cannot fill these jobs.
Nuclear
Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power are refurbishing reactors for years to come.
Project Management Professional (PMP)
The usual route into managing projects and budgets.
A master's degree
Needed for chip design, signal processing and research roles.
Co-op at a utility
Hydro One, BC Hydro and municipal utilities hire their co-op students back.
Tinkering
Arduino, Raspberry Pi, a soldering iron. Shows you like the work, not just the pay.
Programming
Python and C. Almost every electrical job involves some code.
Amateur radio licence
Cheap, and a real signal to telecom employers.
Mines, oil sands plants and northern hydro dams need electrical engineers on site. Many run rotations, such as two weeks in and one week out, with flights and camp paid. The pay premium is real, often 20% or more, but it is hard on relationships. People usually do it for a few years, then move to a city office.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
At a utility: reviewing substation drawings, running load studies, and meeting planners about a new subdivision or transmission line. Some days on site in a hard hat checking installations. At an electronics company: designing circuit boards, testing prototypes on a bench, and writing firmware. In consulting: sizing electrical systems for buildings and reviewing contractor submissions. All three involve a lot of documentation.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Electricians install and repair wiring through a paid apprenticeship. Electrical engineers design the systems and rarely touch a wire at work. Different jobs, different training, and neither can legally do the other's work.
In 1965 Hydro-Québec switched on the world's first 735 kilovolt transmission line to carry power from dams hundreds of kilometres north of Montreal. Utilities everywhere copied the idea.
More than half of Ontario's electricity comes from the Bruce, Darlington and Pickering nuclear stations. Refurbishing and expanding them is one of the biggest sources of electrical engineering jobs in the country.
Alexander Graham Bell worked out the idea for the telephone at his family home in Brantford, Ontario, in 1874 before building it in Boston. Canada's telecom industry has been hiring electrical engineers ever since.
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.