Build the apps on people's phones. iPhone or Android, one skill set, strong pay.
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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 $100,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $62,000 at the lower end to about $160,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$500 to $62,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$100,000
Lower end
$62,000
Upper end
$160,000
Job Bank's national median is $48.08 an hour, about $100,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($30) and upper end ($76.92) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. Job Bank pools this title with all software developers (NOC, the National Occupational Classification, code 21232), so treat it as the software developer range.
$52.40 an hour
The median in British Columbia, about $109,000 a year
Ontario and Alberta are next at $48.08, and Prince Edward Island is the lowest at $38.46. Banks, telecoms and large retailers all run in-house app teams and hire juniors from co-op.
Roughly, all in
$500 to $62,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the self taught route: the Android tools cost nothing and run on any computer, and a Google Play developer account is a one time 25 United States dollars, so a few paid courses is close to the whole spend. The high end is a four year computer science degree at 15,000 a year, a Mac so you can build iPhone apps, and the Apple developer account at 99 United States dollars a year. A college diploma sits in the middle at roughly 17,000 in total. Nobody licenses this job, so employers judge you on apps you can show them rather than on a credential.
Android tools run on any computer and cost nothing. Apple's tools cost nothing too, but only run on a Mac.
Remote or hybrid work
Normal for app teams.
Stock options or RSUs (restricted stock units, company shares you receive over time)
Standard at startups and large tech companies.
Learning budget and new devices
Testing on real phones means the company buys the phones.
App revenue
Your own apps can earn on the side through sales, subscriptions or ads.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Same roads as any software developer, plus one platform you go deep on.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Every math you can take, plus computer science if offered. Publish one small app before you graduate. Nothing impresses more.
Computer science degree or college diploma
2 to 5 years
A 4-year degree (Waterloo, Toronto, UBC (University of British Columbia), McGill and many others) or a 2 to 3 year diploma. BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) offers a Web and Mobile Development option in its diploma. Pick a program with co-op.
Pick a platform
During school
iOS (Swift) or Android (Kotlin), or a cross-platform tool like React Native or Flutter that builds both. Most developers know one deeply and one loosely.
Ship apps
During school
Real apps on the App Store or Google Play, with real users and real reviews, are your portfolio.
First job
Final year
New grad hiring happens in the fall for the next summer. Co-op employers often hire their students back.
Computer science
The head start matters.
Advanced Functions and Calculus
Required for most computer science degrees.
Visual arts or media arts
Apps live or die on how they feel to use.
English
Writing clear bug reports and app descriptions is part of the job.
No licence, no exam, no professional body. Apple and Google review every app before it goes live, and that review is the closest thing to a gatekeeper in this field. The title engineer is protected in most provinces, so job ads say mobile developer.
Quebec has a 3 year college program that teaches mobile apps directly, so many developers start work with no degree.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
The Computer Science Technology program needs Secondary IV math in the Technical and Scientific or Science sequence, or Secondary V Cultural, Social and Technical math.
Computer Science Technology DEC (Diploma of College Studies, 420.B0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program of 2,670 hours. In English at Dawson, Vanier, John Abbott and Heritage. No tuition for full-time Quebec residents.
Choose a college with mobile courses
Years 2 and 3
Native app development is an option each college can choose. Vanier lists mobile and web apps as a main focus, and Dawson students build mobile apps.
Internship
Final term
Vanier's program has a 300 hour internship. Dawson ends with an industry placement and offers paid summer work terms.
Work, or go to university
After the DEC
Concordia's computer science degree and the ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure) software engineering degree both accept this DEC (Diploma of College Studies).
Mind the title
Any time
Only members of the OIQ (Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the Quebec order of engineers) may call themselves engineers, so "mobile engineer" is off limits without membership.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Both platforms
Developers who can ship on iOS and Android are rarer.
Back-end and cloud
Apps talk to servers. Knowing AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Firebase makes you a full-stack mobile developer.
Security
Banking and health apps need developers who understand encryption and privacy law.
Performance work
Making an app fast on a cheap phone is a senior skill.
An app with real users
Even 500 downloads shows you can finish and ship.
Design sense
Knowing Apple's and Google's design guidelines saves a designer's time and gets you hired.
Hackathons
Weekend app builds are common at Canadian universities and often sponsored by employers.
Some developers skip the job and sell their own apps. Some make a living, many earn very little. The upside is you own it. The downside is app stores take a cut of every sale, marketing is hard, and a platform change can break your business overnight. Most people do it on the side of a salaried job.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Stand-up with the team, then building a screen or a feature, wiring it to the back-end, and testing it on a rack of phones. A design review with the UX (user experience) designer. Fixing a crash that only happens on one Android model. Preparing a release, then waiting for Apple or Google to approve it. Every few months, a new operating system version changes something you have to fix.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A Google Play developer account is a one-time $25 US. Apple's Developer Program is $99 US a year. A teenager with a laptop can have an app in front of the world for less than a hundred dollars.
Job Bank counted about 155,700 software developers and programmers, mobile developers included, in Canada in 2023. Only 18% were 50 or older.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Software first, then the rest of the field. See every career in tech.
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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