Canada’s tech skill shortage: 2025 market scan across Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary

Canada’s technology labour market has entered a new phase in 2025—one marked not by the exuberant hiring cycles of the late 2010s, nor by the correction of the early 2020s, but by a more structural tension between digital ambitions and the talent required to deliver them. Across the country, employers are scaling AI deployments, reshaping their data foundations, shifting legacy systems into cloud-native infrastructures, and hardening their cyber posture in an era of rising geopolitical risk. The result is a deeper skills imbalance: demand is increasingly concentrated in highly specialised roles, while the pool of experienced talent has not grown at the same pace.

This report identifies the 20 technical skill domains that are most in-demand and under-supplied, ranked from #20 to #1. The focus is not on job titles but on the underlying skill clusters that drive hiring decisions in 2025. What matters is where shortages are felt, how intensely they are experienced, and how they differ across the country.

Methodology

The list synthesises multiple real-time and annual sources, including Canadian tech salary guides, hiring trend reports, government labour market indicators, enterprise job postings, and proprietary insights from staffing-market activity. The ranking reflects three core criteria:

1. Demand Intensity: volume of postings and the breadth of industries seeking the skill.
2. Supply Constraints: the depth of mid- to senior-level talent available in Canada, plus the speed at which new entrants can realistically upskill.
3. City-Level Variations: the unique industry clusters and digital transformation paths in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal, each of which shapes its own shortage pattern.

Severity scores (Low / Moderate / High / Very High) capture the structural tension between demand and supply in each city.

The 20 Most In-Demand Technical Skills in Canada (Ranked from #20 to #1)

#20 — Low-Code / Automation Platforms (Power Platform, ServiceNow, Nintex)

Description:

Low-code automation has become a lever for cost reduction and workflow modernisation. The shortage comes from the hybrid nature of the skill: professionals must pair business process understanding with technical design. This limits the pool, especially for enterprise-grade implementations.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Strong enterprise adoption → Moderate shortage
• Vancouver: Mid-market SaaS and internal tooling → Low to Moderate
• Calgary: Energy and field-service automation → Moderate to High
• Montreal: Large enterprises & public sector transformation → Moderate

#19 — AI Security, Risk & Governance

Description:

As generative AI moves into regulated sectors, demand is rising for talent who can oversee AI model risks, compliance, data provenance, and safety frameworks. The supply is very small because the field is still emerging and requires cross-disciplinary expertise.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: First wave of structured AI risk teams → High
• Vancouver: AI tool vendors adding governance roles → Moderate
• Calgary: Early-stage, usually integrated into CISO functions → Low to Moderate
• Montreal: AI research density pushing early demand → High

#18 — Embedded/IoT & Industrial Software (C/C++, PLC/SCADA, IIoT)

Description:

Canada lacks engineers who understand both operational technology and modern connectivity. This skill gap matters for energy, manufacturing, transportation, aerospace, and emerging IoT hardware ecosystems.

City Situation & Severity:

• Calgary: Energy & pipelines → Very High
• Toronto: Automotive, med-tech and hardware startups → Moderate
• Vancouver: Cleantech & hardware → Moderate to High
• Montreal: Aerospace & transport systems → High

#17 — QA Automation & Test Engineering

Description:

As teams move away from manual testing, experienced engineers who can build automation frameworks, integrate tests into CI/CD pipelines, and design performance testing strategies are still limited, especially at the senior level.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Large enterprises scaling automation → High
• Vancouver: Product-heavy market → Moderate
• Calgary: Smaller volume but difficult roles to fill → Moderate
• Montreal: Gaming & AI workloads elevate expectations → High

#16 — UX/UI & Product Design

Description:

Canada’s digital platforms compete on experience, but the pool of designers with strong research discipline, design systems mastery, and product collaboration depth remains modest. Market demand rises as more companies refresh their digital interfaces.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Mature product ecosystem → High
• Vancouver: SaaS & gaming push → High
• Calgary: Fewer roles; each hire is difficult → Moderate
• Montreal: Gaming & VFX create premium demand → High

#15 — CRM & Customer Platform Engineering (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics)

Description:

As revenue operations mature, firms need specialists to architect integrations and automate customer journeys. The talent is limited because these systems require both technical customization and business-process depth.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Big SaaS + enterprise CRM estates → High
• Vancouver: Growth-stage SaaS → Moderate to High
• Calgary: Energy services CRM modernisation → Moderate
• Montreal: B2B SaaS and gaming support → Moderate to High

#14 — ERP / Enterprise Application Specialists (SAP, Oracle, Dynamics)

Description:

Large ERP transformations continue across Canada, but mid- to senior-level consultants, functional specialists, and integration engineers remain scarce. Enterprise migration cycles often collide, creating localised hiring spikes.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Major ERP migrations → High
• Vancouver: Mid-market project cycles → Moderate
• Calgary: ERP for utilities & energy → High
• Montreal: Enterprise & government projects → High

#13 — Cyber & Data Privacy Compliance (Law 25, PIPEDA, GDPR)

Description:

Regulatory pressure, particularly in Quebec under Law 25, has forced companies to embed privacy-by-design into their systems. Technical privacy talent (data retention, consent, classification) remains limited.

City Situation & Severity:

• Montreal: Most acute due to Law 25 → Very High
• Toronto: Financial and health sectors driving demand → High
• Vancouver: SaaS platforms require privacy hardening → Moderate
• Calgary: Energy firms handling sensitive operational data → Moderate

#12 — Cloud & Network Infrastructure (hybrid networks, zero-trust)

Description:

As companies modernise infrastructure, hybrid cloud network engineers who understand performance, routing, identity, and zero-trust architectures are hard to replace. Legacy to cloud transition is driving persistent demand.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Large banks & telcos → High
• Vancouver: Tech firms prioritising secure connectivity → Moderate to High
• Calgary: Industrial network modernisation → High
• Montreal: Public sector + financial institutions → High

#11 — Data Analytics & Business Intelligence (SQL, Tableau, Power BI)

Description:

Analytics remains a core capability across all industries. The constraint is not junior analysts, but mid-career talent able to translate data into decisions, design data models, and work across business lines.

City Situation & Severity:

• Toronto: Financial analytics → High
• Vancouver: E-commerce & SaaS analytics → High
• Calgary: Commercial & operational analytics → Moderate to High
• Montreal: Gaming & AI-driven analytics → High