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Can you move to Canada as a software engineer? Getting licensed, the immigration routes that fit this job, and your first steps, from official pages.
Software engineers and developers can immigrate to Canada, and Job Bank, the federal jobs site, says software developers and programmers are not regulated in Canada. The word engineer is where the rules start: for software engineers and designers, Job Bank says that approving engineering drawings and reports, or practising as a Professional Engineer (P.Eng.), takes a licence from a provincial or territorial engineering association. So two questions run side by side. Permanent residence (PR, the right to live in Canada permanently) is a decision for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, while engineering law in your province decides what you may call yourself and which work needs a licence. IRCC's lists for category rounds leave out both software occupations, and that shapes the routes below.
Canada sorts jobs with the National Occupational Classification (NOC). Immigration programs use it to identify your job and its TEER level, which says how much training the job usually needs.
TEER 1: jobs that usually need a university degree
Express Entry is the online system Canada uses to invite skilled workers to apply for permanent residence. Some of its rounds invite only people with recent work experience in a set group of jobs, called a category. This job is in none of them, so people in it can be invited in the other rounds: general rounds and rounds for a single program.
Whether you need a licence for this job depends on the province or territory: some require one, others do not.
Not for writing software as such, but sometimes for engineering work done with it. Engineers Canada, the national organization of the engineering regulators, says in its paper on software engineering that not all software practice is software engineering. In most jurisdictions, it says, non-engineers such as software developers can design, build and test software when the work neither applies engineering principles nor safeguards life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment. Software that forms a significant part of essential public infrastructure, such as a power distribution system, or that controls systems that could put the public at risk, such as self-driving cars, is different: in most jurisdictions, a licensed software engineer must take responsibility for it. In Quebec, the paper adds, non-engineers may carry out software engineering if they avoid work reserved to engineers and do not present themselves as engineers.
The title follows its own rule. Engineers Canada says that in most provinces an unlicensed person cannot use the title software engineer or any variation, even when an employer assigned it, and it suggests titles such as software specialist or software technician. New Brunswick's regulator lists renamed jobs, with software engineer changed to software developer, designer or analyst. Alberta changed its law in 2023, and Alberta's careers site says that if your work falls outside the practice of engineering, you can work as and call yourself a software engineer without registering; if it falls within it, you must register as a professional engineer.
If you want the licence, compare your studies with Engineers Canada's software engineering syllabus. Its compulsory examinations cover algorithms and data structures, computer architecture and operating systems, software design, real-time systems, requirements and specifications, software quality assurance, the development process and discrete mathematics.
Express Entry is IRCC's online system for handling applications to its federal skilled worker programs. IRCC ranks candidates by points under the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) and invites them in rounds. The stages are set out in our Express Entry guide, and our CRS calculator estimates a score.
IRCC also holds rounds for categories of occupations, but its category lists include neither software engineers and designers nor software developers and programmers. Your profile competes instead in general rounds, which invite top-ranking candidates eligible for any Express Entry program, and in program-specific rounds, which invite those eligible for a specific program. Our guide to category rounds explains the difference. If you have worked in Canada, the Canadian Experience Class asks for at least 1 year of skilled work in Canada within the 3 years before you apply, plus approved language test results, and has no education requirement.
Provinces and territories other than Quebec and Nunavut can also choose people to nominate for PR; our provincial nominee guide covers how that works. Both software groups appear on the occupation list of Saskatchewan's Innovation and Tech Talent Pathway. Among its conditions: a permanent, full-time job offer that the province approves before you apply; post-secondary education that relates to the job; a year of related work in the past five years if you apply from outside Saskatchewan; and, if you apply outside Express Entry and do not already work for that employer, language results of at least Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 5.
It can, on a temporary work permit. The Global Talent Stream lets employers in Canada hire highly skilled temporary foreign workers for jobs on its global talent occupations list, which includes software engineers and designers and software developers and programmers. The employer applies for a labour market impact assessment (LMIA), which IRCC says determines whether hiring a temporary foreign worker will have a positive or negative effect on Canada's labour market. Through this stream, the employer must also develop a Labour Market Benefits Plan, committing to activities with lasting, positive effects on Canada's labour market. After a positive decision, you apply for the work permit. Skilled work you then do in Canada, with permission to work, is the kind the Canadian Experience Class counts. Our LMIA guide explains the employer's side.
Counting remote work for a Canadian company as Canadian experience. The Canadian Experience Class asks for skilled work gained by working in Canada while you were allowed to work here, and IRCC says that if you worked remotely, you must have been physically in Canada and working for a Canadian employer. Years of coding for a Canadian employer from another country do not meet it. Work done while you were self-employed, or while you were studying full-time, does not count for this program either. Check where your work was physically done before you plan around this route.
Answer our free questionnaire, which asks about your work, and get a free summary of your eligibility for every Canada pathway we assess. The full report is a later choice, never a condition.
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