Engineering built on rock, soil and groundwater: tunnels, mine slopes, dams and contaminated ground.
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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 $65,000 at the lower end to about $173,000 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.
$36,900 to $88,000 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.
Good 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
$65,000
Upper end
$173,000
Job Bank's national median is $49.81 an hour, about $104,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The low and high are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group, from $31.27 to $83.24 an hour.
$60.63 an hour
The median in Nova Scotia, about $126,000 a year, the highest in Canada
British Columbia is next at $53.98. Quebec's median is $48.84 and Ontario's is $45.00. Field work can add daily expense and truck allowances, depending on the employer.
Roughly, all in
$36,900 to $88,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year engineering degree at about $9,000 a year, basic field gear, the professional practice exam and the first year of licence fees. The high end is a five year program at $17,000 a year, a field school that is charged separately, and the full licensing path to a P.Eng (professional engineer) licence, which costs roughly $300 to $500 a year to hold. Employers supply safety gear after your first season. Co-op work terms are paid, which helps many students cover part of the cost as they go.
Co-op work terms are paid, which helps many students cover part of the cost as they go.
Field allowances
Per diems, camp accommodation and paid travel days on remote projects.
Overtime or time off in lieu
How long field days are paid or banked varies by firm. Ask before you accept.
Health, dental and a matched savings plan
Paid licence fees and technical training
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree that sits between civil engineering and earth science, then supervised work and a licence.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Calculus, Advanced Functions, Physics and Chemistry. Earth science or geography is a useful extra.
Accredited geological engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Only a handful of schools offer it. You can also reach the same work through civil engineering with a geotechnical focus.
Field school
2 to 6 weeks
A few weeks of mapping outdoors, usually after second or third year. Most people remember it as the best part of the degree.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register with your provincial regulator and log about four years of supervised work (24 months in Quebec), usually mixing office design with site investigation.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After about 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Pass the law and ethics exam, submit your experience record, and you can seal your own designs.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required, with a minimum of about 70% at most schools.
Physics and Chemistry
Both are required for engineering admission.
Earth and space science
Optional, but a real head start on rocks and groundwater.
Geography
Maps, landforms and reading terrain are daily tools.
Engineering is a closed profession in Canada: only a licensed professional engineer can practise it or use the title. Geoscience is closed too in most provinces, so some people hold both. In Alberta, APEGA (the Alberta Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists) registers engineers and geoscientists together, and Engineers and Geoscientists BC (British Columbia) does the same. A geological engineering degree can qualify you for either stream, which is unusual and useful.
The full geological engineering degree exists at only a few Canadian schools.
Ontario
Waterloo and Queen's. Waterloo runs its program as co-op only, with work terms from first year.
West
University of British Columbia and the University of Saskatchewan.
Atlantic
The University of New Brunswick, the only program in Atlantic Canada.
Quebec
Polytechnique Montreal and Laval offer mining and geological streams in French.
Back door
Civil engineering plus geotechnical electives and a summer of drilling work gets you into the same jobs.
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 geological engineering
About 4 years
About 4 years, taught in French. Offered at Polytechnique Montréal, Université Laval in Quebec City and UQAC (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi) in Saguenay. All three lead to the order.
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 the 3 hour exam of the Office québécois de la langue française (the Quebec French language office), at no cost. Then the order issues your permit.
Université Laval, in Quebec City
120 credits. One paid 12 to 15 week internship is required, three more are optional. Streams in environment and water, mineral exploration, or geotechnics and natural hazards.
UQAC (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi), in Saguenay
120 credits, starting in fall or winter. Courses in hydrogeology, geophysics and foundations, with field camps.
Polytechnique Montréal, in Montreal
Génie géologique (geological engineering), 4 years.
What the work covers
Planning drilling and reading rock data during mineral exploration, then the geological, geotechnical and groundwater work for underground and open pit mines.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Rock mechanics
Deep mines and tunnels need it and very few people have it.
Hydrogeology
Groundwater, dewatering and contamination. Steady work from cities, mines and cleanup projects.
Dam and tailings expertise
Heavily regulated since several high profile failures, and a serious responsibility.
A master's degree
The normal entry ticket for specialist geotechnical roles.
A driver's licence
You will drive trucks on gravel roads to sites almost immediately.
Comfort outdoors
Rain, bugs, cold and long days logging drill core.
Mapping software
Geographic information system tools and rock slope modelling programs.
First aid and safety tickets
Often required before you can set foot on a mine site.
Early in your career you are the person on site: standing at a drill rig in the rain, logging core, running tests and sending samples to the lab. Later you move into the office and design what the field data supports, then send juniors out. Some people miss the field so much that they stay out longer on purpose. Others are happy to trade mud for a desk by their thirties.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
On a site week: up at 6, drive to a drill rig, log core all day, measure joints and fractures, take samples and write the field log. On an office week: run slope stability models, read lab results, write the report that tells a mine or a city what the ground will do, and sit in a meeting explaining why the cheap option is a bad idea.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Mount Polley mine waste dam in British Columbia failed in 2014. The expert panel traced it to a weak layer of old lake sediment under the dam, and found a flatter slope would have avoided the failure. It called for independent boards to review mine waste dams.
Geological engineering is one of the rarest engineering degrees in Canada. Waterloo notes its program is one of only two in Ontario, with just 15 to 20 students in first year.
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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