Skip to main content

Tech Careers in Montreal, Canada

Data Engineer in Montreal: Salary & Job Market Guide

Montreal is a global centre for AI research, aerospace, and gaming, offering a lower cost of living than Toronto or Vancouver and a large bilingual talent pool.

Estimated mid-level salary: $87,000 - $124,000

Estimates shown in Canadian dollar equivalents for comparison across cities. Local offers in Montreal are typically made in CAD.

The Montreal Job Market for Data Engineers

  • World-class AI research anchored by Mila and Yoshua Bengio's lab
  • Aerospace giants including Bombardier, CAE, and Pratt & Whitney Canada
  • One of the world's largest video game development clusters (Ubisoft, EA)
  • Bilingual roles often command a salary premium

Top hiring industries in Montreal: AI & Tech, Aerospace, Gaming, Pharma, Finance. For a data engineer, that means tailoring your resume to the sectors doing the most local hiring, and using the exact skill keywords those employers screen for.

Build Your Data Engineer Resume

Create an ATS-optimized Data Engineer resume in minutes with 200+ templates and AI writing help. Free to start.

Start Building Free

About the Data Engineer Role

Data engineers build the pipelines and platforms that move, clean, and organize data so analysts and machine learning systems can use it. As every company becomes data-driven, they have become some of the most sought-after builders in tech.

Skills Montreal employers look for

  • SQL at an expert level
  • Python
  • Data pipelines (Airflow, dbt)
  • Data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery)
  • Spark and distributed processing
  • Data modelling
  • Cloud platforms

For the full career path, salary bands by seniority, and complete FAQs, see the main Data Engineer career guide.

Scan a Data Engineer Job Posting

Paste a Data Engineer job description and see your match score, missing keywords, and ATS compatibility instantly.

Scan a Job Free

Data Engineer in Montreal: FAQs

How much does a Data Engineer make in Montreal?
A mid-level Data Engineer in Montreal typically earns between $87,000 and $124,000 per year (shown in Canadian dollar equivalents for comparison; local offers are usually made in CAD). Senior professionals and leads earn meaningfully more, and pay varies with company size and specialization.
What is the job market like for a Data Engineer in Montreal?
Montreal is a global centre for AI research, aerospace, and gaming, offering a lower cost of living than Toronto or Vancouver and a large bilingual talent pool. Key strengths of the local market include: world-class ai research anchored by mila and yoshua bengio's lab; aerospace giants including bombardier, cae, and pratt & whitney canada. The strongest hiring sectors are AI & Tech, Aerospace, Gaming.
Is data engineering harder to enter than data science?
It is usually easier, because the market is less flooded and the skills are more concrete. Employers need people who can write solid SQL and Python and keep pipelines running; the interview bar is practical rather than research-oriented. Many frustrated data science applicants find offers faster after pivoting to data engineering.
What does a data engineering portfolio project look like?
An end-to-end pipeline: ingest a public API or dataset on a schedule, transform it with dbt or Spark, load it into a warehouse, and put a dashboard or data quality checks on top. Document the architecture in the README. This mirrors the actual job far better than any notebook analysis.

Data Engineer Jobs in Other Cities

TorontoVancouverCalgaryOttawaEdmontonWinnipegHalifaxVictoriaWaterlooNew YorkSan FranciscoSeattle

Related Careers in Montreal

Data Scientist

Tech

$95,000 - $135,000

Machine Learning Engineer

Tech

$95,000 - $135,000

Backend Developer

Tech

$95,000 - $135,000

Launch Your Data Engineer Career

Join CareerGraph free and get every tool a Data Engineer needs: resume builder, job scanner, AI interviews, and tracking.

Create Free Account
AI Assistant