Work out what things are made of, why they break, and what to build them from next.
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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 engineer
$100,000
Engineer-in-training
$69,000
Senior or specialist
$138,000
Job Bank's national median is $48.08 an hour, about $100,000 a year full time. Plant jobs in Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie and Alberta's industrial corridor pay near the top. University and government research labs usually pay less than industry.
$69,000 to $80,000
EIT (engineer-in-training) in a plant or a test lab
Co-op terms during your degree pay roughly $20 to $32 an hour, and steel, mining and aerospace employers hire a lot of their own former co-op students.
$138,000 and up
Senior metallurgists, corrosion specialists, failure analysts
The best paid work is where failing materials would be expensive or dangerous: pipelines, reactors, aircraft parts, offshore structures. Expert witness and consulting work is billed by the day.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Both ends are the four year engineering degree multiplied out, about 9,000 a year at the cheap end and about 17,000 a year at the expensive end. On top of that sit the professional practice exam and the licence application, which together come to under 1,000. The professional engineer licence is not granted until roughly four years of supervised work after graduation, and the dues of 300 to 500 a year start then. Paid co-op work terms cover a useful share of tuition for students who get them, but most graduates still finish with some debt.
Fees differ by province, so check your own regulator. Co-op pay covers a useful share of tuition, but most graduates still finish with some student debt.
Pension or a matched savings plan
Large manufacturers and utilities usually offer one.
Health and dental from day one
Shift premiums
If you support a mill or plant that runs around the clock.
Paid professional fees and training
Most employers cover your licence fees and conference costs.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A four year degree, then about four years of supervised work before you are fully licensed.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Calculus, Advanced Functions, Physics and Chemistry. Chemistry matters more here than in most engineering fields.
Accredited engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Materials engineering, materials science and engineering, or metallurgical engineering. Many schools run a common first year and let you pick in second year.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years
Register with your provincial regulator, work under a licensed engineer and log your experience.
Professional practice exam
During your training years
A law and ethics exam. Most people write it in their first or second year of work.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After about 4 years of experience
Now you can sign off on engineering work and take legal responsibility for it.
Chemistry
Required, and you will use it more than most engineers do.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required. Stress, strain and heat are the daily language.
Shop or technology class
Handling metal and plastic yourself makes the theory stick.
Only a licensed professional engineer can practise engineering or use the title in Canada. Each province has its own regulator, such as Professional Engineers Ontario, APEGA (the Alberta regulator), and Engineers and Geoscientists BC. You need an accredited degree, about four years of supervised experience and a law and ethics exam. A licence moves between provinces with a straightforward application. Anyone may call themselves a materials scientist, but only a licensed engineer can sign engineering work.
The field is small, so there are fewer programs than in civil or mechanical engineering.
Ontario
McMaster in Hamilton, Toronto, Queen's.
West
University of British Columbia, Alberta.
Quebec
Polytechnique Montreal, Laval.
Another route
A mechanical or chemical engineering degree plus a materials focused master's also gets you there.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Welding engineering
Canada needs people who can qualify welding procedures for pipelines, pressure vessels and shipyards.
Corrosion specialist certification
Offered by industry associations. Oil, gas and water utilities pay well for it.
Non-destructive testing knowledge
Ultrasound, X-ray and dye tests that find cracks without cutting a part open.
A master's or doctorate
The usual entry to research labs, battery companies and university work.
A summer job in a plant
Even general labour teaches you how real production works.
Lab skills
Electron microscopes, hardness testers and tensile machines are standard tools.
Python or MATLAB (an engineering maths program)
Materials work involves a lot of data and modelling.
Clear writing
Most of your output is a report someone else has to act on.
When a part breaks, someone has to find out why. Materials engineers cut the broken piece open, look at the fracture under a microscope and work out whether it was a bad alloy, a bad weld, fatigue, corrosion or simple misuse. That work feeds insurance claims, lawsuits and safety investigations, so it pays well and it is steady. It also means writing reports you may have to defend in court.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning in the office reviewing test results from yesterday's samples and answering questions from production. Late morning in the lab with a technician, checking hardness and looking at a polished sample under a microscope. Afternoon on the plant floor in boots and safety glasses, watching a heat treatment run and arguing about why a batch came out brittle. End of the day writing the report that says what to change.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Hamilton, Ontario has made steel for more than a century, and McMaster University grew a materials department beside the mills. The industry is now rebuilding around electric furnaces that melt scrap instead of burning coal.
Steel that is tough at room temperature can snap like glass in deep cold. Canadian pipelines, rail and ships are built from grades that are tested at low temperatures for exactly that reason.
Electric vehicle battery plants are being built in Windsor and St. Thomas, Ontario, with cathode and refining plants in Quebec. All of them need people who understand what happens inside the cell.
Under an electron microscope a broken surface shows how it failed. Fatigue leaves ring shaped beach marks, brittle fracture leaves shiny facets, and overload leaves tiny dimples. Investigators read that surface like handwriting.
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.