Montréal’s engineering prowess ranks globally

An eternally inventive city, it’s no wonder why Montréal holds some of Québec’s top engineering companies and plays a pivotal role in fostering the next generation of engineering excellence. The city was officially deemed a City of the Future based on its digital life, mobility innovation, business tech infrastructure and its use of technology to create a sustainable tomorrow. In short, here are just a few ways in which we’re engineering a better future.

A richly diverse pool of experts

Montréal’s pool of up-and-coming and proven talent is impressive. There are more than 17,000 university students enrolled in engineering-related programs at either the renowned École Polytechnique de Montréal, École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Université de Montréal, Concordia University or McGill University. Montréal ranks among North America’s top cities to score tech talent, with McGill at the head of the game with a ranking among North America’s Top 35 universities for engineering (and 64th worldwide) on EduRank’s 2025 list.

The city represents more than 34% of the province’s pool of engineers, of which approximately 22% are women. There are more than 32,900 engineering professionals in Montréal who are related to the aerospace industry.

Engineering associations and institutes

You’ll find two Canadian engineering associations in Montréal — the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering — as well as two of the leading organizations in Québec’s engineering industry, the Association des firmes de génie-conseil Québec and the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. Several leading foreign subsidiaries also have offices here, including SNC-Lavalin, Stantec, ALTEN, Cima International, BBA, Tetra Tech and Pomerleau. The city is also home to the aerospace cluster, known as Aéro Montréal.   

Montréal boasts highly specialized research centres and institutes in the fields of artificial intelligence, software engineering and computer science. They include:  

• Montréal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA)
• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Computer Research Institute of Montréal (CRIM)
• Institute for Data Valorisation (IVADO)
• ENCS Software Engineering Research Center (SERC) - Concordia University
• Canada Excellence Research Chair in Data Science for Real-Time Decision-Making (CERC) - Polytechnique
• Reasoning and Learning Lab (RLLAB) - McGill University
• Laboratory for Imagery Vision and Artificial Intelligence (LIVIA) – ÉTS 

Major engineering events

Our competitive academic spaces and high-tech facilities make Montréal a natural place to host international tech and engineering meetings, congresses and conventions. Some of the most recent include:

• Annually World Summit AI Americas (3,000 attendees)
• 2025 CIM Connect 2025 (5,000 attendees)
• 2025 ECS 2025 Spring Biannual Meeting (2,250 attendees)
• 2025 53rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (1,300 attendees)
• 2025 ASEE Annual Convention (4,000 attendees)
• 2025 34th International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (4,000 attendees)
• 2024 AOCS Annual Meeting (1,600 attendees)
• 2024 Vertical Flight Society 80th Annual Forum & Technology Display 2024 (1,200 attendees)
• 2024 IISE 2024 Annual Conference & Expo (1,600 attendees)
• 2024 ISMB 2024 Annual Meeting (1,800 attendees)
• 2024 International Symposium on Mathematical Programming 2024 (1,500 attendees)
• 2024 IEEE Quantum Week Conference 2024 (1,200 attendees)
• 2024 MicroTAS 2024 Conference (1,200 attendees)
• 2024 World Molecular Imaging Congress 2024 (1,100 attendees)

From our thriving AI scene to our booming life-sciences sector, Montréal offers a culture of renewal and originality. Engineering is at the core of all that inventiveness.