Make factories, warehouses and hospitals run faster and waste less. The engineering degree most likely to end in a management job.
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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 $92,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $60,000 at the lower end to about $156,000 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.
$36,000 to $72,500 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.
Limited 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
$92,000
Lower end
$60,000
Upper end
$156,000
Job Bank's figures for industrial and manufacturing engineers across Canada (2023 to 2024) are $29.00 an hour at the low end, $44.23 median and $75.00 at the high end, about $60,000, $92,000 and $156,000 a year at 40 hours a week. Many industrial engineers move into management.
$57.69 an hour
Job Bank's median in Alberta, about $120,000 a year, the highest of any province
Newfoundland and Labrador is next at $48.90. Ontario's median is $45.67 and Prince Edward Island's is the lowest, at $40.23. Industrial engineering often leads to a management title such as plant manager or operations director.
Roughly, all in
$36,000 to $72,500
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year engineering degree at the cheaper domestic rate with no professional licence, which is the reality for many industrial engineers whose work never involves sealing drawings. The high end is the same degree at the top of the range plus EIT (engineer in training) registration, several years of dues, the professional practice exam, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course paid out of your own pocket. Employers commonly pay for the Green Belt once you are working. Engineering tuition runs above arts and business at almost every Canadian university, so the degree is the entire story here.
Many industrial engineers never get the P.Eng (professional engineer) licence because their jobs do not involve sealing drawings. It still helps, and it is cheap next to the degree.
Health, dental and a pension or matched savings plan
Bonuses
Tied to plant or company performance.
Profit sharing
At some manufacturers, including the big automakers.
Hybrid schedules
In office-based and consulting roles.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Degree, supervised experience, exam, licence. The licence matters less here than in other engineering fields.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced functions, calculus, physics and chemistry are required for admission. The marks you need range from the high 60s at some schools to the high 80s and low 90s at the most competitive.
Accredited engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Industrial engineering at Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan, Windsor, Ontario Tech, Dalhousie, Concordia or Regina. Waterloo calls it management engineering. Some schools say manufacturing or systems engineering. All are accredited.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register as an engineer-in-training (EIT) with your provincial regulator. Work under a licensed engineer. Log your experience.
Professional practice exam
During your EIT years
A law and ethics exam, written during your first years of work.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Optional in many industrial jobs, but it protects your title and opens doors in consulting and government.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
Data management or statistics
Industrial engineering runs on statistics.
Business
You will be reading budgets by your second year of work.
Industrial engineering is a recognised engineering discipline, and graduates register as engineers-in-training with the provincial regulator, such as APEGA (Alberta's regulator) or Engineers and Geoscientists BC (EGBC). Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) closed its engineer-in-training program to new applicants in 2023: there you work, log your 4 years of experience and then apply. But much of the work is process design, scheduling and analysis rather than stamped drawings, so plenty of people work for years without a licence. You still cannot call yourself an engineer without one.
Ontario
Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan, Waterloo (management engineering), Windsor, Ontario Tech (industrial or manufacturing engineering).
Quebec
Concordia, Polytechnique Montréal.
Prairies
Regina (industrial systems engineering).
Atlantic
Dalhousie (Halifax).
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 industrial engineering
About 4 years
About 4 years for CEGEP graduates. In French at Polytechnique Montréal or UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), or operations and logistics engineering at ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure). In English at Concordia.
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 about 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.
Concordia University, in English
Industrial Engineering, 120 credits, with an optional co-op of paid 12 to 16 week work terms.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
Génie industriel (industrial engineering).
UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), in French
Génie industriel (program 7945), 120 credits, up to 3 paid internships. Profiles in advanced manufacturing, occupational health and safety, or logistics.
ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure), in French
Génie des opérations et de la logistique (operations and logistics engineering, program 6556), with three paid 4 month internships.
Starting from a technical DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
Industrial Engineering Technology (235.B0) is a 3 year DEC, for example at Collège Ahuntsic. UQTR recognizes up to 21 of its credits.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Lean Six Sigma belts
Green Belt, then Black Belt. The standard credential for process improvement. Employers often pay.
PMP (Project Management Professional)
Moves you into managing projects and budgets.
SCMP (Supply Chain Management Professional)
The Canadian supply chain designation. Logistics jobs like it.
MBA (master of business administration)
The classic jump into senior management.
Co-op at a factory or distribution centre
See a real production line before you graduate.
Excel, Python and simulation software
Most of the analysis lives in a spreadsheet or a model.
A part-time job in a busy kitchen, warehouse or store
You will start seeing broken processes everywhere. That instinct is the job.
Hospitals use industrial engineers to cut emergency department wait times, schedule operating rooms and design how patients move through a building. It is the same math as a factory, applied to people. If you want engineering that is not about machines, this is one of the few doors in.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
On a plant floor by 7 with a stopwatch and a tablet, timing a production line and asking operators where the bottlenecks are. Mid-morning, into a spreadsheet or simulation model to test a new layout. Lunch with the maintenance team. Afternoon meetings on next quarter's production schedule and a cost-saving proposal for the plant manager. In logistics, swap the plant floor for a warehouse. In healthcare, for a hospital ward.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Industrial engineering began in the early 1900s with people timing how workers moved. Frank Gilbreth started by watching bricklayers. He and his wife Lillian raised 12 children, and their family became the Hollywood movie Cheaper by the Dozen.
Job Bank counted about 20,400 industrial and manufacturing engineers working in 2023 and expects a moderate risk of a shortage of workers through 2033. Alberta is the only province where it rates 3-year prospects good.
The Toyota Production System is the model for lean manufacturing, the method of cutting waste from every step. Toyota's three Ontario plants, two in Cambridge and one in Woodstock, run on it.
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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