Can tech companies employ software engineers while escaping the regulation of the engineering profession?
This fall, an Alberta court will rule on the Alberta engineering regulator’s power over software engineers.
The court’s decision could set an important legal precedent for the country. If the court rules in favour of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), regulatory bodies in other provinces could follow suit.
Tech companies and associations, which say that software engineers should not be subject to APEGA’s jurisdiction, warn that a ruling for APEGA would make Canada’s tech sector a less attractive destination for global tech talent.
Tech groups say regulator’s focus on software engineers is new
The legal case currently before the Alberta court commenced in 2021, when APEGA sued Jobber, a Edmonton-based software company. Jobber had been posting job ads on its careers page that referred to software engineers, data engineers and other engineering roles, despite not being an engineering services firm.
“[These roles] are very common in the world of tech startups and software companies,” Jobber CEO Sam Pillar said in a published Q&A with the Canadian Council of Innovators (CCI).
APEGA and other engineering regulators insist that the engineering profession, in any context, must be licensed as a matter of public safety. An engineer must be registered if their work affects public safety and “requires the application of engineering principles in its development,” according to APEGA’s website.
In a 2022 signed statement, engineering regulators in every province and territory agreed that using any IT-related prefix in front of the term “engineer” — such as “computer engineer” or “software engineer” — is prohibited unless the individual is licensed by their province’s engineering authority.
Andy Smith, deputy chief regulatory officer at the 102-year-old APEGA, says the association has always regulated software engineers.
“APEGA has been around longer than the term software engineer. So we have probably started regulating it since it existed rather than since we existed,” said Smith.
But technology groups and companies say the push to regulate software engineers is new.
APEGA has only recently — within the last two years — been approaching companies and software engineers demanding they become registered, says Jessica Sinclair, director of government affairs in Alberta for the CCI.
“[Regulators] really didn’t start pressing the issue until we started to see the tech and innovation economy in Alberta grow,” says Sinclair. “We see this as a bit of a power grab on APEGA’s part.”
Software field is broad
One of the unusual factors affecting the software engineering profession is that people with a range of educational backgrounds and credentials can perform work in the software field. Software developers and software technicians are two examples.
“If you’re developing, say, a computer game on your cell phone, it’s not going to be life critical, and we wouldn’t necessarily call that the practice of engineering,” said Smith at APEGA.
“It’s also possible that a company could be contracted to develop a piece of code that’s unrelated to their core business, and suddenly they’re doing engineering,” said Smith. “Every case is individual.”
APEGA will approach companies that seem to have individuals practicing software engineering and can request that they become registered. It can also ask others who are deemed to not be working as a software engineer to change their job title. For engineers to keep the regulated “software engineer” title, workers or the companies that employ them must pay upwards of $500 a year in membership fees.
‘We have to hire for the job people are familiar with’
In 2022, CCI and 110 tech companies in Alberta signed an open letter to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asking the Alberta government to intervene and have APEGA stop regulating software engineers as engineers.
Earlier this month, Smith issued a mandate letter to the minister of technology and innovation that said the government would “ensure appropriate governance of software engineers that will not hamper the efforts of tech companies to attract these needed-professionals from competing jurisdictions.”
Tech companies say they will struggle to attract talent if the term “software engineer” can only be used to refer to individuals with engineering degrees. Jobs with the “software engineer” title attract the most applicants compared to other terms used to refer to software professionals, says Sinclair.
“The people that we’re going after are used to seeing ‘software engineer’ in the job posting,” Pillar said in the Q&A. “So when we go to try to hire them, we have to hire them for the job that they’re familiar with. We’re competing with companies like Google and Facebook, and if we can’t do that on a level playing field, we’re not going to be able to build big Canadian companies.”
“There’s a bit of a sort of mental gymnastics, when you consider that Alberta needs tech talent so much, and yet, we’re restricting the ability of companies to use the globally recognized title,” said Sinclair.
Teams often don’t have one engineer overseeing the work of a team, says Terry Rock, CEO of Platform Calgary, a technology innovation hub. Many times, a team of software engineers — sometimes located in different parts of the world — will work on a project together. Having to determine who is doing the work of a software engineer in Canada, and imposing regulation on their position will threaten the countries’ competitiveness in attracting talent.
“Alberta is on the cusp of high growth, and we actually have been one of the fastest growing tech ecosystems in the country… when this issue has come up, it has just slowed down that momentum,” said Rock.
I find it hard to believe that, if you advertise a software job paying $X per year, your applicant pool will be any weaker than it would be if you had used the word “engineer.” Aren’t the job search sites smart enough to show job-seekers the jobs they might be interested in, without using that word, which has a very specific meaning not just in Alberta but in many parts of the world?