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. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$100,000
Junior
$62,000
Senior or lead
$160,000
Job Bank's national median is $48.08 an hour, about $100,000 a year full time. Job Bank pools this title with all software developers (NOC, the National Occupational Classification, code 21232), so treat it as the software developer range. Mobile specialists are usually at or slightly above it.
$60,000 to $75,000
Junior iOS or Android developer
Job Bank's low end is $30 an hour. Banks, telecoms and large retailers all run in-house app teams and hire juniors from co-op. Agencies pay a bit less.
$130,000 to $160,000+
Senior, staff and lead mobile engineers
Job Bank's top end is $76.92 an hour. Stock and bonuses at big tech companies push total pay well past this. A hit app of your own is the lottery ticket version.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the self taught route: the Android tools are free 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 are free. Apple's tools are free 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.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Both platforms
Developers who can ship on iOS and Android are rarer and paid for it.
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. A few make a living, most make coffee money. 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.
Before the iPhone, Waterloo's BlackBerry made the phone everyone in business carried. The company lost the consumer war, but the engineers it trained seeded software companies across the Waterloo region.
Canada's big banks each run large in-house mobile teams. Bank apps are among the most used apps in the country, and the banks hire steadily through co-op programs.
React Native and Flutter let one team build for iPhone and Android at once. Many companies now hire one mobile team instead of two, which is why knowing both platforms pays.
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.