Need a degree from an accredited school in engineering + pass the engineering licensing requirements. In Ontario, where I live, that means passing an ethics exam + some years of work that is overseen by someone with a P.Eng. The challenge in software is usually the last part.
The exact policy depends on the province but an American engineer that passed the FE exam can easily become an Engineer in Training (EIT) and an American engineer that has more than 4 years work experience (reporting to an engineer) can easily become a Professional Engineer (P.Eng) in Canada.
In other cases, they look at your academic and work history, and may ask you to take FE and/or PE exams and/or an ethics exam and may ask you to complete specific engineering courses. It's actually possible to obtain accreditation through work experience alone (10 years IIRC).
You can even take the FE and PE exams in Canada for this purpose (and for Canadian grads that want to work in the US). Note that if you get an engineering degree in Canada, you don't have to take the FE exam or equivalent to start as an engineer in training, because the engineering schools themselves are accredited with very similar curriculum.
Personal anecdote: I have a Canadian engineering degree but I personally had no problem using work experience abroad as part of my four years experience towards my P. Eng.
If you work in tech writing software or building hardware this has no impact on you at all. You can still do the exact same stuff, you just can't have 'Engineer' in your title. This stuff only really comes into play for say civil engineers signing off on the final design of a project or a chemical engineer doing the same for some plant.
They cannot practice, as in they cannot stamp drawings, or in other words take responsibility for things that require an engineer to take responsibility for. What it means in practice is that either they work in a sector that does not require stamping drawings, or a P.Eng. has to review their work and stamp their drawings.
Well glad I live in California! I’m a college drop out and all self taught. Not a member of any associations. Happily doing lots of great engineering here in the states!
I don't know the details for Canada specifically, but I doubt not having a degree precludes you from registration - generally having one just expedites it.
I'd encourage you not to discount professional bodies as irrelevant, or incapable of becoming more relevant, our industry could benefit from it in many ways - perhaps most frequently on-topic on HN is the ethical and whistle-blowing aspect. Also plenty of professional development and networking, and that only improves as more people that get involved from different (or rather one's own specific) areas.
Not having a degree precludes registration... in fact, the degree must be from an engineering society accredited program, to ensure you get enough hours in front of a P.Eng prof or lecturer, among other things, I think.
One Canadian university's Comp Sci dept. started offering Software Engineering program one time and it ended up in a lawsuit the outcome of which is... complicated.
Canada is, I feel, very... lot of red tape.
The traditional term "engineer" isn't even a very good description of software dev anyway.
Software dev people should just make a new word up and abandon "Engineer".
It does apply to the railroad in general but there are a few job titles grandfathered in that don't require a P. Eng. such as locomotive engineer (the other common one is power engineer) because those job titles were used before the engineering regulations existed and the job descriptions don't match the modern definition of engineering in Canada.
For engineering disciplines in the railroad industry such as structural, mechanical and electrical, a P. Eng. is indeed required.
Usually it means you graduated with an accredited Engineering degree from university, and you are licensed by the regulatory body in your province to practice engineering. The laws differ from one province to another regarding what constitutes an Engineer.
I'm not 100% sure about the rest of Canada, but in Quebec: If you pay a yearly fee to be a member of the professional order of engineers, you can call yourself an engineer.
Sure, you have to have minimum a bachelor's from an accredited Canadian university, pass an ethics exam, and have supervised experience (or prove that you obtained the equivalent) to join in the first place, but if you don't pay the yearly fee you can only call yourself a "holder of an engineering degree".
Professional licensing along the lines of architects amd doctors - i.e. board exams and long multiyear supervised internship by a senior licensed engineer. At least that's how it looked last time I checked.
My last job in Canada the other Engineers got uppity about that with me.
I studied a degree called "Software Engineering", that was 4 years with first class honors. It is accredited by, and I'm a member of the Australian Institute of Engineers.
The only way for me to get accredited in Canada it 2 years of relevant work experience with an accredited Engineer in my field.
Not sure why this topic is getting downvoted to oblivion.
The entire Google Canada workforce just had our titles changed from 'software engineer' to 'software developer' and were asked to update linkedin profiles to reflect this, as well.
Protected titles seem to have differing meanings in many places. Doctor is a pretty universally understood one; yet we throw around "Architect" pretty willy nilly and it's a protected title in many more countries than Canada.
Yet somehow Canada gets special consideration and other countries do not.
For context: I work for a French company, and we have many Architects despite that being a protected term. But we do not have Engineers in Canada (even if they have MSc CompSci engineering degrees).
I have been told that this in fact is only really an issue in Quebec. I am not a lawyer, but, I don't believe it's an actual issue elsewhere in Canada.
In Alberta too. No surprise really. Both Quebec and Alberta (also Ontario) have LOTS [1] of political influence from traditional engineering companies.
You know, not that long ago in Alberta, you could use "Software Engineer" without a P.Eng license.
Then the engineering society (APEGA) sued someone (Raymond Merhej) who did that [2]. But Raymond won in the courts.
So APEGA appealed. But Raymond won the appeal in the courts too.
So APEGA lobbied the Alberta Government to change the laws.
And from Alberta: "Kenney’s United Conservatives were elected last April on a promise to focus on oil and gas and bring jobs back to Alberta by reducing the corporate income tax rate and red tape" (Alberta government files red ink budget with focus on oil and gas, https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/government/2020... )
Yeah, I'm from Alberta and went to the U of A (but for A B.A. philosophy [unfinished] not CS).
Back in the 90s I ended up having to come out here to Ontario to get work in software development; not just because there wasn't any work in Edmonton really but because companies there really weren't even going to look at someone without a CS or engineering degree. Every once in a while I muse about moving back there and I take a look around at job postings and I think even with my 8 years as a SWE at Google (and a 20 year career in dev generally) I might have a hard time landing a job there; lots of postings heavily emphasizing the academic angle and obviously trying to pull people straight out of the university.
It's a more conservative business culture in some ways.
This is absolutely false. For example, please review the "Software Engineering Experience Review Guideline" for Saskatchewan [0]. This was approved back in 2014.
Just throwing some info out there since I graduated from this exact program. We may graduate with an engineering degree, but we technically cannot use the word engineer in our title (in Canada) until we get our accreditations, which require a couple years working in Canada under a somebody else with their P.Eng license.
The vast majority of us (definitely > 90% of my class) have moved to the US after graduation where we pretty much can use whatever role we want (eg. my official title is software engineer at my company), but from what I know of the few people left in Canada, their roles are officially "programmer" or "developer". I've actually heard stories of P.Engs on messaging people in my program on LinkedIn to change their job titles to not include the word engineer. I'm not really sure what the repercussions are.
> we technically cannot use the word engineer in our title
Just for completeness: it’s OK to use the title “B. Eng.”, which means you have a Bachelor’s in engineering, without implying anything about being a professional engineer.
Question for you then: Can you work under someone who's a P.Eng mechanical or civil engineer, and then get your own P.Eng license that way (as a software engineer)?
IIRC there's no limitations on who you work under provided they are licensed; P.Eng license is a not tied to any specific discipline. If I complete my engineer-in-training (4 years professional industry experience under the supervision of one (or more P.Engs)) and pass the exam component, then I will also be licensed as a P.Eng. I may choose to work as a software engineer, or any other role, but being a P.Eng means that I uphold the standards, ethics, and discipline of the engineer title.
Please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments to HN. You've done it a lot and we've warned you before. Eventually we ban accounts that keep doing this.
