Updated July 2026 · Canada · Ontario
Waterloo AI compensation.
Per-capita AI engineering density rivals Toronto. Anchored by University of Waterloo and an entrepreneurial alumni network spanning BlackBerry to OpenAI.
AI salaries in Waterloo.
A Software Engineer in Waterloo earns a median of CA$118,082 per year in base salary.
Base salary, annual, in CAD. Reconciled from ESDC Open Government wages, NOC 2021 coded. Sample sizes are structural placeholders. ESDC does not publish per-cell counts.
| Role | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Product Manager | CA$91,998 | CA$134,410 | CA$199,992 |
| Engineering Manager | CA$91,998 | CA$134,410 | CA$199,992 |
| Software Engineer | CA$75,005 | CA$118,082 | CA$174,990 |
| DevOps Engineer | CA$75,005 | CA$118,082 | CA$174,990 |
| AI Infrastructure Engineer | CA$75,005 | CA$118,082 | CA$174,990 |
| Backend Developer | CA$67,205 | CA$100,568 | CA$180,003 |
| AI Solutions Architect | CA$59,467 | CA$97,760 | CA$151,008 |
| Machine Learning Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| AI Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| ML Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Prompt Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| NLP Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Computer Vision Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| AI Research Scientist | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| LLM Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Generative AI Developer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Data Scientist | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Data Engineer | CA$51,438 | CA$92,810 | CA$135,990 |
| Frontend Developer | CA$59,114 | CA$89,253 | CA$131,477 |
| Full Stack Developer | CA$59,114 | CA$89,253 | CA$131,477 |
City facts.
- Province
- Ontario
- Population (metro)
- 0.6M
- StatCan ER code
- 3540
- Industries
- ai-engineering, scaleups, deep-tech
How the Waterloo number is built.
Waterloo figures come from ESDC's Open Government wages dataset, which publishes per-occupation pay at the Economic Region level. Waterloo resolves via Statistics Canada Economic Region 3540, and each Orbyt role maps to its NOC 2021 occupation code. The figure is gross base salary in Canadian dollars; provincial and federal income tax is the consumer's calculation, not baked in.
Every estimate traces back to its government source through the methodology paper. The figure is served in native Canadian dollars.
Cite the source.
Every Waterloo estimate Orbyt publishes traces back to a specific government data source. The methodology paper documents the per-source weights, confidence tiers, and reconciliation rules.