Make sure buildings and bridges stand up. A civil engineering specialty with a master's, a stamp, and the liability that comes with 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.
8 to 10 years after high school, on the usual route.
$38,000 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 counts structural engineers with civil engineers. Its national figures for 2023 to 2024: a median of $48.56 an hour, about $101,000 a year at 40 hours a week, with a lower end of $32 and an upper end of $72.12 an hour: the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group.
$64,162 to $75,195 a year
Level 1 of the federal engineering group, the entry level for engineers in the public service, from October 1, 2025
Level 2 starts at $81,945 and level 3 runs from $100,684 to $122,337. Private consulting firms set their own pay, and many structural firms expect a master's degree.
$61.75 an hour in the Northwest Territories
The highest median on Job Bank for civil engineers, about $128,000 a year at 40 hours a week
Among the provinces, Alberta is highest at $51.69 and Newfoundland and Labrador next at $51.15. Prince Edward Island is lowest at $36.30.
Roughly, all in
$38,000 to $90,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year civil engineering degree at a lower tuition province plus the registration fees: engineer in training while you build experience, then the professional practice exam and the professional engineer licence. The high end adds a master's in structural engineering, which is close to expected in this branch, on top of a higher tuition degree. Research based master's degrees are usually funded by the supervising professor, so that part often costs far less than the sticker price. The licence fee of roughly 500 dollars a year continues for the rest of your career and is not included here.
Structural is one of the few engineering paths where a master's is close to expected. Research-based master's degrees are often funded.
Health and dental
Bonuses
Common in consulting firms.
Liability insurance paid by the firm
You need it. Your name goes on the drawings.
Licence fees and courses covered
Standard at most firms.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Civil degree, usually a master's, supervised experience, licence.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics and Chemistry are required for admission. Marks in the 80s or higher at most schools.
Civil engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Structural is a specialty of civil engineering. Take the structural stream in third and fourth year at any accredited civil program: Toronto, Waterloo, UBC (University of British Columbia), McGill, Alberta, Calgary, Queen's, McMaster and many others.
Master's in structural engineering
1 to 2 years
Steel, concrete, timber and seismic design in depth. Not legally required, but most big firms prefer it.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register as an engineer-in-training (EIT). Work under a licensed structural engineer: check calculations, coordinate drawings, visit sites.
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 seal drawings and carry legal responsibility for the structure.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required. Forces and loads are the whole job.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
Technological design or drafting
You will read and mark up drawings every day.
Only licensed professional engineers can design structures. Each province has a regulator: Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), APEGA (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta), Engineers and Geoscientists BC (EGBC). BC goes further, with an extra title, Designated Structural Engineer, earned with its own exams. Your P.Eng (professional engineer) licence transfers between provinces. Ontario stopped taking new engineer-in-training applicants in 2023, so there you log your experience and then apply; check PEO for the current rules.
Ontario
Toronto, Waterloo, McMaster, Queen's, Western, Carleton.
Quebec
McGill, Polytechnique Montréal, Sherbrooke.
West
UBC (University of British Columbia), Alberta, Calgary, Manitoba.
Atlantic
Dalhousie (Halifax).
Quebec students reach university after a 2 year CEGEP (public college) diploma, so the civil engineering 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
About 4 years
About 4 years for CEGEP graduates. Choose the structures courses, such as steel and concrete design. In French at Polytechnique Montréal. In English at McGill, or Concordia's civil infrastructure option.
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, at no cost, of the Office québécois de la langue française (the Quebec French language office). Then the order issues your permit.
McGill University, in English
Civil Engineering. For structures it strongly recommends matrix structural analysis and steel and concrete design, with wood design and wind engineering as further choices.
Concordia University, in English
Civil Engineering, civil infrastructure option: reinforced concrete and steel design, structural dynamics and finite element analysis.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
Génie civil (civil engineering) with the Bâtiments et ouvrages d'art (buildings and structures) orientation: steel, concrete and wood buildings, bridges, overpasses and dams. One paid 4 month internship is required.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Designated Structural Engineer (BC)
An extra BC title for structural specialists, earned with its own exams after your licence.
Seismic design
BC is earthquake country. Upgrading schools and hospitals so they survive a quake is steady work.
Bridge design
Provincial transportation ministries and consulting firms. Long careers, big structures.
Mass timber
Canada leads in tall wood buildings. A specialty few people have yet.
Structural software
ETABS and S-Frame (structural analysis programs) and Revit (building modelling software). Firms hire the people who already know them.
A summer on a construction site
Watching a slab get poured teaches you what drawings cannot.
Read the design codes early
Steel and concrete design in Canada follows national standards. Get used to their language.
Hand sketching
A quick section drawn at a meeting still solves problems.
Some structural engineers spend their careers looking at what is already built: condo balconies, parking garages, old bridges, buildings after a fire or a flood. It is less design, more detective work, and a lot of driving. Condo building reviews alone keep small firms busy in Ontario and BC (British Columbia).
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Mostly a desk in a consulting office. Morning: model the steel frame for a 6-storey building in analysis software and check the beam sizes by hand. A call with the architect about moving a column. Afternoon: review drawings from the drafting team, sign off on a shop drawing, and write up yesterday's site visit, where the contractor poured a slab that did not match the plans. Deadlines cluster around building permit dates.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
On June 23, 2012, the roof of the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake, Ontario collapsed. Two people died and more than 20 were hurt. Ontario held a public inquiry into the collapse and the rescue.
In 2012 British Columbia's engineering association and UBC (University of British Columbia) civil engineers re-checked more than 500 schools against earthquakes, drawing on over 8 million retrofit analyses. They found 152 schools with at least one high-risk section.
Brock Commons at UBC (University of British Columbia), 18 storeys and 54 metres, opened to students in 2017 as the tallest hybrid mass timber building in the world at the time. It has 404 beds.
More than 1,500 workers spent 40 months building the 553 metre CN (Canadian National Railway) Tower, pouring concrete into a mould that hydraulic jacks lifted as it hardened. It was the world's tallest freestanding structure until 2009.
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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