Future-proof your career: Canada's top 10 most in-demand jobs

The 2022 LinkedIn "Jobs on the Rise" report on the fastest-growing roles is out and guess what? Tech jobs make up half of the top 10 list!

Canada's job market in its latest "Jobs on the Rise" report over the past five years. The publication aimed to show the most in-demand jobs during the pre-pandemic period up till now.

It's no surprise that tech positions fill most of the top 10 list. In a country that is increasingly connected and is today a reference in deep technology, it is to be expected that the 10 most needed jobs in Canada will continue to have technology as a central demand for a long time coming.

The 10 most needed jobs in Canada are the fastest-growing ones

LinkedIn is assertive in pointing out that the fastest-growing jobs since 2017 are an excellent way to predict the medium and long-term employment market. See the graph below with the 10 most needed jobs in Canada according to its growth rate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly contributed to some of the roles listed above, such as Vaccine Specialist. Due to forecasts regarding the fight against coronavirus — mainly in relation to preventive solutions — it is right to believe that many specialists in biomedicine and public health areas will continue to appear on lists of in-demand jobs.

Regardless of the area, it is also right to assume the growth of open positions in the technology field. Every industry is a tech industry today, so it's not unexpected that tech jobs are the majority of this top 10 reported by LinkedIn.

The 10 most needed tech jobs in Canada

We took the listed tech jobs from LinkedIn's report and filtered it down according to the top 10 in-demand careers.

The first position, Site Reliability Engineer (Software Engineers, etc), works to automate tools that will guarantee greater efficiency and reliability in the system. 

In a technology market like the Canadian one, it is to be expected that the demand for Security Engineers (Cyber Security Engineer, Cyber Security Specialist, etc) will also be high. The emergence of blockchain, NFT companies, and other fintechs in Toronto, Waterloo, and Quebec has explained this profession's high demand.

Canada's job market has been recognised for raising technological challenges as its scene is anchored in many emerging solutions such as blockchain, quantum computing and fusion energy. No wonder the country has received the market's attention when searching for skilled talent.

But what would the challenges be without the rewards? That's why a natural question that every tech worker asks is how much is this Canadian market paying? And that's what we seek to analyse below.

The salaries of the 10 most needed tech jobs in Canada

We dug deep into the Economic Research Institute records to gather the salary data for the positions listed by LinkedIn. Some professions were listed with a slight variation in the description (Computer Graphics Supervisor became Animation Director, and Product Consultant became Product Designer). All the values of the average salary are listed in US dollars.

Tech Engineers and Software Developers continue to dominate the top positions. It is no wonder why they are still some of the most sought after roles and the best paid. But it is interesting to highlight some specific jobs that have been gaining the attention of many technology companies in Canada. One example of this is Project Managers — represented on the list as E-Commerce Coordinators.

Machine Learning Engineer

Tech recruiters have highly pursued Machine Learning Engineers. The Canadian industry has a fertile technological environment for programmers to grow and have job stability in large companies or even growing startups. There, they will be required to develop their work through the most-used libraries such as:

• Scikit-Learn
• Keras
• MLlib
• PyTorch
• Azure

Security Engineer

The Security Engineer is a cybersecurity professional responsible for monitoring and anticipating attacks and failures in the organization's network and systems. In a tech industry like Canada’s, primarily populated by deep tech, the experience and know-how of someone with this profile are essential.

The job of a Cybersecurity Specialist is often proactive. He needs to anticipate what types of threats could affect the company and fix that vulnerability.

Computer Vision Engineer

The work of Computer Vision Engineers involve image analysis in conjunction with A.I. implementation work. This professional will extract data and work with machine learning to teach the computer to interpret visuals.

This technology has been widely used in the healthcare (skin cancer detection), automotive (accident prevention) and manufacturing (safety of work) industries.

Data Scientists

Data Scientists are what we might call the "rockstars" of technology. Today, every company works with data analysis and the person responsible for interpreting and predicting new scenarios with the help of algorithms is fundamental.

Do you want to know your work tools? Then you should be aware of the main trending programming languages (such as Python, Java, SQL and R). Learning how to use it is essential to organise and clean raw data, then design and analyse datasets crucial for your company to make better business decisions.

Remote work has reached an impressive increase

Jobs in Canada are experiencing an incredible boom in remote hiring. In Q1 2022, 113,000 employees are expected to be working remotely from a Canadian province other than the contracting company.

If we look at the growth since 2016, we see a 796.8% jump compared to the 12,600 remote employees in the same year.

Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, UX Researchers and many other tech roles have the advantage of being part of this select group of works that can be carried out remotely.

Toronto is the #1 high-tech job growth in all North America

According to the Global Commercial Real Estate Services (CBRE), Toronto is the city with the biggest high-tech job growth rate among all the ones in Canada and US.

Many professionals are preparing themselves to embrace this opportunity and be part of an incredibly fast-growing market. With this in mind, many workers are looking for the top skills in-demand to not go unnoticed by Canadian recruiters in 2022. And, notice that when we talk about tech skills, we bring up the most pursued certifications for the main jobs.

The top 10 certifications most needed by companies in Canada

Many courses and certifications have shaken up the study routine of a tech worker. But what are the most needed tech certifications in Canada?

The educational website Simple Learn has listed the top 10 most in-demand skills across Canada to answer that question.

The top positions are dominated by areas of cybersecurity and network/cloud architecture.

But it is interesting to note how certifications involving management areas are also in the spotlight.

If you want to be hired for the 10 most needed jobs in Canada, these are the skills to learn now!

Not all is digital: the importance of soft skills in Canada

The hybrid skillset

There is a clear prediction of how big the presence of technology will be in our lives. In the professional environment, as shown in the paragraphs above, tech jobs are in high demand and come with very competitive salaries. However, the professionals most sought after by companies do not live solely on technical skills.

The report I, Human: Digital and soft skills in a new economy published by the Brookfield Institute (together with the Burning Glass Technologies), analysed the Canadian labour market. The study researched over 7 million English-language online job postings in the country from 2012 to 2018 to know what in-demand skills were needed by the employers.

The research revealed an interesting conclusion in that the highly technical roles not only demanded intensive digital skills, they also required candidates in possession of soft skills such as communication, organisation, writing, and presentation.

“The jobs that require the highest portion of digitally intensive skills are also the most hybrid and the postings also looked for communications skills, budgeting, project management,"
said Viet Vu, one of the study's leaders researchers.

This makes sense when we talk about an industry like Canada’s, with many investments in deep tech where in-demand jobs are often related to the human potential in developing positive solutions from digital innovations. Soft skills are also essential to dealing with ethical and cultural issues related to the implementation of these disruptive technologies.

According to the study, some of the skills that will be valuable include:

• Planning
  The ability to plan your routine in an organized way in order to meet deadlines and also maintain quality delivery.
  
  
• Troubleshooting
  It takes an analytical and innovative ability to solve complex problems and not to fall at simple tasks. Something essential for a data scientist.
  
  
• Project Management
  Organizing multiple tasks and a high-performance team is a task for few. That's why you should learn this soft skill high-demanded by companies.
  
  
• Research
  It all starts with good research. You will need to investigate and develop a research method that will help you advance in your daily tasks and in more long-term subjects.
  
  
• Quality Assurance and Control
  We all have high expectations of data scientists. After all, it is these professionals who will be heard when business decisions are on the table. So, a high level of quality in data interpretation is critical.

Alberta's case

Information and Communications Technology Council's new report, Settling for More: Matching Newcomers to Alberta’s Tech Sector, is another recent report to help understand the Canadian labour market better.

The study shows how employers have been basing their interviews with a greater focus on soft skills than the candidates' hard skills.

"Being able to work within a team, willing to help others, able; to communicate confidently, and have empathy for teammates and customers… these qualities don’t always come with technical people.” Roger Milley, Founder CEO, Fuzeium Data Analytics

As detailed in the study, it is also very important to be clear about the difference between soft skills and "culture fit" in the hiring process for both employers and employees.

We can help you get hired in Canada

Airswift has a long history with Canada. We have been in the country since 2007 and already have a total of five offices spread across the Great White North in the locations listed below

• Calgary, Alberta
• St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador
• Halifax, Nova Scotia
• Toronto, Ontario
• London, Ontario

During these years, we have built solid expertise in the engineering and technology sectors. Our experience has proven unique in bringing together leading and emerging companies with the best global talent.

Upload your CV to our database and get one step closer to discovering your next big career opportunity.