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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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Licensed engineer
$95,000
Engineer-in-training
$70,000
Principal or firm owner
$140,000
Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary pay the most and have the most work. Small firms pay less but hand you responsibility sooner. Partners in consulting firms earn well above this range.
$65,000 to $75,000
Engineer-in-training (EIT), often after a master's
A master's degree adds a few thousand to the starting offer and is expected at many structural firms.
$100,000 to $140,000
Project lead, 8 to 15 years in
Bridge and seismic specialists, and anyone who can manage clients, earn the most. The value is in your stamp. Once you can sign drawings, you are the person the firm cannot lose.
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 high 80s or above 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
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
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: engineers who design high-risk buildings must earn a Designated Structural Engineer title with extra exams. Your P.Eng (professional engineer) licence transfers between provinces. Ontario closed its engineer-in-training program to new applicants in 2023: there you work, log your 4 years of experience and then apply.
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).
Things you don't need, but that help.
Designated Structural Engineer (BC)
Required for high-risk buildings in BC. Extra 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 (a structural analysis program), Revit, S-Frame. 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.
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.
The BC coast sits on the Cascadia subduction zone, where a magnitude 9 earthquake is possible. BC has spent billions upgrading schools so they will not collapse. Structural engineers do that work.
In 2012 the roof of the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake, Ontario collapsed and killed two people. A public inquiry found that engineers had signed off on a structure that was rusting through. Every structural engineer in Canada learns the case.
Brock Commons at the University of British Columbia was the tallest mass timber building in the world when it opened in 2017, at 18 storeys. Canadian structural engineers are leading the shift from concrete to wood.
The CN Tower in Toronto was the tallest free-standing structure in the world for over 30 years after it opened in 1976. Its concrete core was poured continuously, around the clock, by a crew that climbed with the tower.
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.