No matter where you live in this beautiful country, there are opportunities to work in Canada’s robust and vibrant technology ecosystem.
Below, Tech Talent Canada takes a look at some of the nation’s key tech regions and their current opportunities available.
Ontario
The province of Ontario is home to multiple major economic hubs.
There is of course Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and a global Fintech powerhouse. And there is also the York Region, home to thousands of tech companies and a rapidly growing population. Plus who can forget the Kitchener-Waterloo hotspot, with hundreds of tech startups and a renowned university that even Silicon Valley cannot ignore? And if you’re into the increasingly prevalent technology of artificial intelligence, the province is good for that too: last year, more than 7,000 new jobs were generated in Ontario in the AI space alone.
The opportunities in Ontario appear limitless, especially in the field of technology.
British Columbia
The beautiful province of British Columbia boasts a robust jobs economy, and in the southwest region we find an internationally renowned startup hub—the Northern tip of a talent and technology pipeline flowing all the way to Silicon Valley in California. Anchored by a creative tech ecosystem in Vancouver, other hubs such as Victoria on the island and the Okanagan area in the interior of the province have been gaining momentum in recent years with an increase in startup activity.
BC is proudly home to at least a dozen “unicorns,” which are tech companies exceeding $1 billion in valuation. Current BC unicorns include Blockstream, Visier, AbCellera, Clio, Dapper Labs, Galvanize, GeoComply, Thinkific, and Trulioo. Thanks to the high-energy entrepreneurship and local support of the area, startups with unicorn potential emerge almost daily in Vancouver.
Unicorns are pretty much always hiring but they’re not the only ones: BC is home to more than 500,000 small businesses—more per capita than any other province, in fact. If you’re looking for career opportunities in BC in tech, consider yourself with options.
Alberta
Despite a “notable impact” of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Alberta’s economy, the province’s digital economy “remained resilient and thrived,” concluded a report from the Information and Communications Technology Council of Canada. From February 2020 to May 2022, participation in Alberta’s digital economy grew by nearly 18%, according to the report—titled A Resilient Recovery: Alberta’s Digital-Led Post-COVID Future—and employed an additional 30,000 Albertans. This was well ahead of overall economy growth.
There are now more than 2,800 technology companies in Alberta as of last year, according to research from PwC. This is a massive increase from 2016, when just 1,500 were counted. In the first quarter of 2022, Alberta experienced its highest quarterly investment on record, according to data from the Canadian Venture Capital Association. Through Q1, more than two dozen companies—half of which were in the technology sector—raised a combined $466 million.
And major investments like the Province’s quantum physics hub continue to drive innovation in the region. Calgary as Quantum City? This is the high-tech vision that ambitious locals such as University of Calgary president Ed McCauley have. “We’re starting something big,” he says.
Overall, Alberta looks strongly positioned moving forward, with Calgary and Edmonton leading the way as tech hubs for the province.
Opportunities in Tech
A small sampling of the many tech talent roles available across hubs in Ontario, BC, and Alberta.
In Toronto, take a look at Achievers, Phoenix, Swift, or Wave. In Kitchener-Waterloo, consider Clearpath Robotics, Arctic Wolf, or Loopio. There is Big Blue Bubble and Mobials in London and Rocket Mortgage in Windsor.
In Vancouver, actively hiring firms include Lumen5, Bright Health, and Loop Energy. Edmonton has opportunities from Avanade and AltaML, while in Calgary we know that Helcim, WaitWell, and Showpass are bolstering their teams with tech talent.
And if you prefer to work from home, many Canadian firms now offer remote roles.
Still searching? Find your path in life by perusing the Tech Talent Canada Job Board or attending a national virtual Job Fair.
