Tech Talent by Canadian City: Where to Hire in 2026

If you're building a tech team in Canada, the real question isn't whether the talent exists. It does, in growing numbers. The question is which city actually has the mix of skills, price, and depth your roadmap needs, because Canada's tech workforce isn't one market. It's a handful of very different hubs, each specialized in something specific: Toronto in scale, Vancouver in compensation-competitive engineering, Waterloo Region in raw density, Montreal in AI research, and Calgary in growth from a smaller base.

Canada's tech workforce, in one picture

Canada's tech sector grew 1.9% in 2025, and CompTIA projects another 1.8% net gain in 2026, adding roughly 28,000 jobs and pushing the total tech workforce past 1.5 million workers. Ontario alone accounts for close to half of that growth. Tech now makes up 11% of local employment in Toronto, 9% in Vancouver, 8.6% in Montreal, and 8.5% in Calgary: well above the roughly 5.3% average CBRE tracks across its 50 largest North American tech markets.

How the major hubs stack up

CBRE's 2025 Scoring Tech Talent report ranks 50 North American markets on talent supply, cost, and growth. Here's where the main Canadian hubs landed, and what's driving the movement:

• Toronto: 3rd overall (up from 4th), and the single biggest contributor to national tech job growth, adding 42,900 jobs from 2021 to 2024. It's the default choice for teams that need scale and a full bench of specialized roles.
• Waterloo Region: 7th, up 11 spots, tied for the biggest gain in the entire ranking. It has the highest concentration of tech workers relative to its size of any market this list covers, a legacy of Waterloo's engineering programs and BlackBerry-era talent density.
• Vancouver: 10th, and consistently the most expensive Canadian market to hire in, largely because it competes directly with Seattle and the Bay Area for the same engineers.
• Ottawa: 11th, with tech comprising over 10% of local employment, driven by a dense cluster of telecom, cybersecurity, and government-adjacent tech work.
• Montreal: 15th, but punches well above that rank for AI specifically. Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal together hold roughly 60% of Canada's AI worker pool, and Montreal's research institutions make it the strongest fit for teams hiring specifically for machine learning.
• Calgary: 17th, up 3 spots, and the fastest-growing tech market in the country by percentage: 61% job growth from a smaller base, as the city continues diversifying away from energy. See our full breakdown of Calgary's startup ecosystem for what that shift looks like on the ground.
• Quebec City: 35th, up 5 spots and worth watching for cost-efficient hiring, especially alongside Sherbrooke's smaller but genuinely specialized manufacturing and cleantech tech scene an hour away.

What it actually costs to hire, city by city

Rankings tell you where the talent is. They don't tell you what it costs. For a straight software engineer role, 2026 benchmarks from recruiting firm Groom & Associates show a consistent gap between the three largest markets:

• Junior (0-2 years): $62K-$83K in Montreal, $75K-$104K in Toronto, $85K-$126K in Vancouver.
• Mid-level (3-6 years): $83K-$120K in Montreal, $104K-$155K in Toronto, $126K-$175K in Vancouver.
• Senior (7+ years): $120K-$155K in Montreal, $155K-$205K in Toronto, $175K-$231K in Vancouver.

Vancouver leads on base salary at nearly every level and role, not because the talent is better, but because local employers are bidding against Seattle and Bay Area companies hiring remotely. Montreal stays the most cost-efficient of the three major hubs across engineering, data science, DevOps, cybersecurity, and AI/ML roles alike.

How to choose a hub instead of chasing a ranking

The mistake we see most often is picking a city off the top of a ranking instead of matching it to the skill that's actually hard to fill. AI and ML hiring points toward Montreal or Toronto. Deep, senior backend and platform engineering at scale points toward Toronto or Waterloo Region. Cost-efficient generalist engineering points toward Montreal, Calgary, or the smaller hubs, like Quebec City, that show up in ShoutEx's Canadian Startup Ecosystem guide.

The city with the most engineers on LinkedIn isn't necessarily the city with the engineers you need. Match the hub to the skill, not the headline ranking.

It's also worth admitting that most later-stage Canadian teams don't hire in just one city anymore. Remote and hybrid work means a Toronto-headquartered company can run an ML team out of Montreal without opening a second office, and a company built around the Canadian Startup Guide's broader talent map can hire against whichever hub actually has the skill, rather than whichever hub happens to have the head office.

FAQ

Which Canadian city has the most tech workers?

Toronto, by a wide margin. CompTIA puts Toronto's tech workforce at roughly 440,551 workers, about 11% of local employment, more than any other Canadian market.

Which Canadian city has the fastest-growing tech scene?

Calgary, by percentage. CBRE recorded 61% tech job growth there in its 2025 report, the highest rate of any Canadian market, though it's growing from a considerably smaller base than Toronto or Vancouver.

Is it actually cheaper to hire in Montreal than Toronto or Vancouver?

Generally yes. 2026 salary benchmarks show Montreal running 15-30% below Toronto and 25-40% below Vancouver across most engineering, data, and security roles, though provincial tax and language considerations are worth factoring in separately.

Where's the best city for AI and machine learning talent?

Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver collectively hold about 60% of Canada's AI worker pool, with Montreal's research institutions giving it a particular edge for ML-specific hiring.

Should a startup commit to hiring in just one city?

Not necessarily. Most later-stage Canadian teams now hire across two or three hubs rather than one, using remote and hybrid arrangements to match each hire to the city where that specific skill actually concentrates.

Related resources

• RENX (Real Estate News Exchange). Canadian cities shine in CBRE's 2025 Scoring Tech Talent rankings.
• CompTIA. Key Takeaways from the State of the Tech Workforce Canada 2026 Report.
• Groom & Associates. 2026 IT Salary Benchmarks in Canada: Montreal vs. Toronto vs. Vancouver.

Choosing a hiring hub is a downstream decision. The upstream one is knowing exactly which roles and skills your GTM actually needs before you go looking for them. If you want a second set of eyes on that, see how ShoutEx approaches GTM strategy.