Soil and rock. Figure out what the ground will hold before anyone builds a foundation, a dam or a mine on 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.
The median pay is about $101,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $67,000 at the lower end to about $150,000 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 $90,000 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
$101,000
Lower end
$67,000
Upper end
$150,000
Job Bank groups geotechnical engineers with civil engineers, so these are civil engineering figures. The national median is $48.56 an hour, about $101,000 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 $32.00 to $72.12 an hour.
$61.75 an hour
The civil engineer median in the Northwest Territories, about $128,000 a year, the highest in Canada
Among the provinces Alberta is highest at $51.69. Quebec's median is $49.74, Ontario's is $48.08 and Prince Edward Island's is the lowest, at $36.30. Field time can add overtime or a field allowance.
Roughly, all in
$37,000 to $90,000
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, registration as an EIT (engineer in training) after graduating, a couple of years of dues, and then the professional practice exam and the application for a P.Eng (professional engineer) licence. The high end is the same degree at $17,000 a year plus a master's in geotechnical engineering, which many people in this specialty do take, though it is often funded by the university. Holding the licence costs about $500 a year in Alberta and British Columbia once you have it. Steel toed boots, rain gear and a hard hat are normally supplied by the employer, so they are not in either figure.
Steel-toed boots, rain gear and a hard hat are usually covered by the employer.
Health and dental
Field allowance and overtime
How long drill days are paid varies by employer, so ask before you accept.
Company truck or mileage
Field roles drive a lot.
Pension
In government and utilities such as BC (British Columbia) Hydro or Hydro-Québec.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Civil or geological degree, often a master's, supervised experience, licence.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics and Chemistry are required for admission. Averages run from the mid 70s at some schools to over 90% at the most competitive.
Civil or geological engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Both are accredited. Civil leans toward foundations and structures. Geological engineering leans toward rock: Queen's, UBC (University of British Columbia), Waterloo, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Laval offer it.
Master's in geotechnical engineering
1 to 2 years
Optional but common. It is where you learn soil mechanics in real depth.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register as an engineer-in-training (EIT). Log boreholes, run lab tests, then move into analysis and reports under a licensed engineer.
Exam and P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Pass the professional practice exam, then apply with your experience record. Now you can sign the geotechnical report a building permit depends on.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
Earth science or geography
Optional, but this is the one engineering field where it directly helps.
Only licensed professional engineers can sign a geotechnical report, and most building permits need one. Each province has a regulator: Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), APEGA (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta), Engineers and Geoscientists BC (EGBC). Geological engineering graduates can often register as geoscientists too. The P.Eng (professional engineer) licence transfers between provinces. Ontario stopped taking new members into its engineer-in-training program in 2023, so check PEO's current rules for new graduates there.
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 civil engineering, with geotechnics
About 4 years
About 4 years for CEGEP graduates. In French, Polytechnique Montréal has a geotechnics orientation and Université Laval a geotechnics concentration. In English, McGill and Concordia teach soil mechanics and foundation design.
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.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
Civil engineering with a 12 credit geotechnics orientation in the last year: foundations, excavations, slope stability on sensitive clays, tunnels, embankment dams and soil clean up.
Université Laval, in French
Civil engineering, 120 credits, with a geotechnics concentration and one required paid internship. Its geological engineering degree also has a geotechnics and natural hazards stream.
McGill University, in English
Civil Engineering, with geotechnical engineering as one of its areas of specialization.
Concordia University, in English
Civil Engineering, 120 credits. The Civil Infrastructure elective group, with Foundation Design, is meant for structural, geotechnical and transportation careers.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Master's in geotechnical engineering
Expected for senior design roles at most firms.
Mine tailings and dam safety
Designing, inspecting and reviewing the dams that hold mine waste. Serious responsibility, and steady work wherever there are mines.
Tunnelling
Subways, rail and water tunnels in the big cities need ground studied before and during digging.
Permafrost and cold regions
The North is thawing. Roads, runways and buildings on frozen ground need redesign.
Summer job as a materials testing technician
Concrete cylinders, soil samples, density tests. It is how many geotechs start.
Comfort outdoors in bad weather
Drill rigs run in rain and snow.
A driver's licence
Sites are rarely near transit.
Geology courses at university
Take the electives.
Geotechnical engineers are the people who say whether a mine's waste dam is safe and whether a pit wall will hold. Mining companies and consulting firms fly them to sites from Nunavut to northern British Columbia. The work comes with the same rotations and remoteness as any mining job.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Field day: on site at 7 with a drill rig crew, logging soil samples as they come out of the ground, running penetration tests and bagging samples for the lab. Mud, rain, and a truck full of gear. Office day: lab results are in, so run slope stability and settlement calculations, then write the report that tells the structural engineer what kind of foundation the building needs. Early career is mostly field. Senior is mostly office.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
On October 18, 1913, part of a new grain elevator at Transcona, Manitoba sank into the ground and tipped 28.5 degrees in about 12 hours. Crews built a new foundation down to bedrock and straightened it. It stayed in use until 2021.
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 that the design missed, and called for independent boards to review mine waste dams.
On the night of May 4, 1971, a landslide at Saint-Jean-Vianney, Quebec destroyed 42 houses and killed 31 people. It led Quebec to map the areas at risk of landslides across the province.
The Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway, opened in 2017, is Canada's first all-season road to the Arctic coast. It sits on permafrost, so geotechnical engineers designed a thick gravel embankment to keep the frozen ground underneath from thawing.
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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