Diagnose and repair the circuit boards inside machines, medical gear and industrial equipment.
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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.
Experienced technician
$55,000
Bench repair, entry level
$37,000
Field service specialist
$86,000
Job Bank's national median is $26.50 an hour, about $55,000 a year full time. Fixing consumer gadgets sits at the low end. Servicing industrial, medical or telecom equipment on site sits at the high end.
$18 to $22 an hour
Bench technician fresh out of a diploma
About $37,000 to $45,000 a year. Phone and computer repair shops pay the least. Manufacturers and industrial service companies start higher.
$35 to $41 an hour
About $73,000 to $86,000 a year
Technicians who travel to hospitals, factories or data centres to keep expensive equipment running are the best paid. Overtime and on-call rates add to that.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the Ontario apprenticeship route, where the in school blocks cost a few hundred dollars each and you are paid on the job, plus a meter, a soldering iron and hand tools. The high end is a three year technology diploma paid for up front with the same tool kit. A two year diploma is the more common route and lands between the two at roughly $8,000 to $16,000 in tuition. There is no licence fee at the end of either route.
A two-year diploma is the normal route and leaves most graduates with modest debt.
Health and dental
Standard at manufacturers, hospitals and utilities.
Company vehicle and phone
For field service roles.
Paid manufacturer training
Equipment makers fly technicians to factory courses on their gear.
Pension
In hospitals, transit agencies and public utilities.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A two-year college diploma is the standard route. Ontario also has an apprenticeship.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Grade 12 math and physics. Any electronics or computer tech class is a bonus.
College diploma
2 to 3 years
Electronics engineering technician (2 years) or technology (3 years) at a college such as NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), Algonquin, Humber, BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) or Nova Scotia Community College. You learn circuits, soldering, digital systems and troubleshooting.
Or apprentice in Ontario
About 3 years
Electronic Service Technician (416E) is a registered trade with on-the-job and in-school training. There is no certifying exam, so you finish with a Certificate of Apprenticeship.
First job
After graduation
Repair depots, equipment manufacturers, hospitals, broadcasters and industrial service companies hire diploma graduates directly.
Specialise
1 to 3 years on the job
Medical, industrial, telecom or audio-visual. Manufacturer training on specific equipment is where the pay climbs.
Physics
Electricity and magnetism are the whole job.
Math
Algebra and some trigonometry for circuit calculations.
Computer engineering or technology
Many schools let you build circuits and program microcontrollers.
English
Service manuals, reports and explaining faults to customers.
No province requires a licence to repair electronics. Ontario registers it as a voluntary trade, but Skilled Trades Ontario issues no Certificate of Qualification for it because there is no exam. Employers care about your diploma, your troubleshooting skill and manufacturer certifications. Anything involving mains wiring or gas appliances crosses into the licensed electrician or gas technician trades.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Biomedical equipment
Hospitals employ technicians to keep monitors, pumps and imaging machines running. Steady, unionized, and well paid.
Industrial and automation
Drives, sensors and PLCs (programmable logic controllers) on factory floors. Overlaps with instrumentation.
Telecom and broadcast
Transmitters, fibre and network hardware.
Technologist upgrade
Adding the third year and registering with a provincial technology association opens design and supervisory roles.
Soldering skill
Surface-mount rework under a microscope is a rare and valued skill.
Driver's licence
Required for any field service job.
Hobby projects
Repairing old gear, building circuits or fixing game consoles shows employers you actually like this.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
On the bench: a queue of units to fix. Read the fault report, power it up, trace the problem with a meter and oscilloscope, replace the failed part, test, document. In the field: drive to a hospital or plant, calibrate or repair a machine while the customer waits, then write the service report. Most days mix careful, quiet diagnosis with the pressure of someone needing their equipment back now.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Canada amended its copyright law in 2024 so that breaking digital locks to diagnose, maintain or repair a product is no longer illegal. It is a small step toward the right-to-repair rules that technicians have asked for.
Ontario registers Electronic Service Technician as an apprenticeship, but it has no certifying exam. That makes it one of the few registered trades where the diploma route and the apprenticeship route end in the same place.
Every infusion pump, monitor and ventilator in a Canadian hospital is inspected and repaired by biomedical technicians, most of whom started with an electronics diploma.
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.