Run the instruments that put buildings, roads and property lines in the right place. Two years of college and you are working.
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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 $62,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $46,000 at the lower end to about $96,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$8,400 to $15,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Quebec. Elsewhere there is none 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.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$62,000
Lower end
$46,000
Upper end
$96,000
Job Bank's national median is $29.75 an hour, about $62,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The low is $22 and the high is $46 an hour: the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group. Overtime and camp allowances on remote jobs are paid on top of the hourly wage.
$36.66 an hour
The median in Newfoundland and Labrador, the highest in Canada
British Columbia ($36.01) and Alberta ($35.17) are close behind. Ontario's median is $29.00 and Quebec's is $29.17. Overtime and camp allowances on remote jobs come on top.
Roughly, all in
$8,400 to $15,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a two year college diploma in survey or geomatics technology at a cheaper province, plus boots and rain gear. The high end is the same diploma at a higher tuition rate with a fuller safety kit and the optional technologist certification, which costs a few hundred dollars to apply for and then yearly dues. The employer owns the instruments and software, so there is no expensive gear to buy. Paid summer field work during the program usually covers a good chunk of the tuition.
There is no gear to buy, and summer field work during school usually covers a big chunk of the tuition.
A truck and a fuel card
Most crews get a company vehicle.
Overtime through the field season
Long summer days add overtime hours.
Camp and travel allowances
Remote resource jobs pay a daily rate for living away from home.
Health benefits
Standard at established survey firms and in municipal jobs.
Winter layoffs in some regions
The honest flip side. Ask about year round work before you accept a job.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
The fastest route into surveying. Two years of college and a summer of field work.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Grade 12 math, especially trigonometry. Physics helps.
College diploma in survey or geomatics technology
2 years
Two years, part classroom and part field. Programs exist in most provinces and fill quickly.
Summer field work
4 months
Take a crew job between first and second year. Employers hire the students they already know.
First job on a crew
Start
Instrument operator on a survey or construction crew, running the total station and satellite gear.
Crew chief
3 to 5 years
Run the crew, plan the job and own the numbers. Usually three to five years in.
Math
Trigonometry and geometry. You will use both on your first day.
Physics
Helps you understand measurement and error.
Geography
Maps, scale and coordinates.
Construction or drafting shop
Reading plans is half the job on a building site.
Computer studies
Survey data is processed on a laptop, not on paper.
Outside Quebec nobody licenses this job, so you can be hired on your diploma and your hands. In Quebec, survey work on construction sites needs a competency certificate from the Commission de la construction du Québec (the Quebec construction commission). The other limit is legal: only a licensed land surveyor can decide where a property boundary sits and sign the plan. You take the measurements and the plan goes out under their seal. That is why career progress here means either becoming a crew chief and running bigger jobs, or going back to school and qualifying as a licensed surveyor yourself.
Nova Scotia
The Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, part of NSCC (Nova Scotia Community College): a 1 year Survey Technician certificate, then the Geomatics Engineering Technology diploma as a second year.
Alberta
SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) runs a 2 year Geomatics Engineering Technology diploma in Calgary.
British Columbia
BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) runs a 2 year Geomatics Engineering Technology diploma.
Ontario
Loyalist College in Belleville runs a 2 year Survey Engineering Technician diploma.
Quebec has two routes: an 18 month vocational DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) for site surveying, or a 3 year geomatics DEC (Diploma of College Studies).
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Math helps on both routes. The new geomatics college program has no required high school courses.
DEP in Surveying and Topography (5238)
18 months
Arpentage et topographie, 1,800 hours, about 18 months, in French at 5 vocational centres, including ones in Montreal, Quebec City and Saguenay.
CCQ (Quebec construction commission) certificate
Before your first site job
To survey on construction sites, show the CCQ your DEP, an employer's promise of at least 150 hours over at most 3 consecutive months, and pay a $100 fee.
Or the Geomatics Technology DEC (230.B0)
3 years
3 years in French at Cégep de l'Outaouais, Cégep Limoilou or Collège Ahuntsic. It covers surveying, mapping and GIS (geographic information systems).
Optional: the T.P. (professional technologist) title
After graduating
College graduates can join the OTPQ (Ordre des technologues professionnels du Québec, the Quebec order of professional technologists). It is needed only to use the title.
Later: land surveyor
4 more years
The licence needs Université Laval's 4 year bachelor's in geomatic sciences. A geomatics college diploma can lead in through a bridge agreement.
Quebec government figures for survey technologists and technicians, averaged over 2023 to 2025. Jobs are for 2024. At 40 hours a week the median works out to about $69,000 a year.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Technologist certification
Provincial bodies such as the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists grant a certified technologist title after a diploma plus supervised experience.
Machine control and grade systems
Bulldozers and excavators now steer off satellite positions. Someone has to set up and check those models.
Drone mapping
A pilot certificate plus survey skills makes you the person a firm sends on aerial jobs.
Mine surveying
Underground and open pit work, on rotating shifts.
Hydrographic surveying
Measuring lake and sea beds from a boat.
A driver's licence
Not optional. Crews live in trucks.
Standard first aid
Cheap, and often required to work on a construction site.
Comfort in bad weather
Rain, cold, bugs and mud come with the job.
A steady hand with numbers
A typing mistake in the field becomes a wall in the wrong place.
Plenty of licensed surveyors started as technologists. Your diploma can be assessed by the Canadian Board of Examiners for Professional Surveyors, which sets subject exams for whatever your program did not cover. You write those while you work, then article under a licensed surveyor and pass the provincial exams. It is slower than going straight to university, but you earn a wage the whole way through and arrive with far more field experience than a new graduate.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
An early start at the yard, load the truck and drive to site. Set up the total station over a known point, then measure: existing ground, building corners, pipe inverts, property monuments. On construction jobs you stake out where the crew should dig and build, and they wait on you, so the pressure is real. Back at the office or in the truck you download the data, check it against yesterday's, and flag anything that does not close. Summer days run long. Winter is quieter in most of the country.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Surveyors once measured with Gunter's chain, introduced in 1620: 66 feet long, made of 100 links. Ten square chains make an acre and 80 chains make a mile, so a square mile holds exactly 640 acres.
The Dominion Land Survey cut western Canada into townships 6 miles by 6 miles, each made of 36 sections of one square mile. They are counted east and west of a north-south line near Winnipeg chosen in 1869.
The Association of Ontario Land Surveyors was set up in 1892, and it still licenses every surveyor allowed to sign a property boundary in the province.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Architecture and planning first, then the rest of the field. See every career in architecture and design.
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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