Getting a tech job in Canada right now is hard. After a pandemic-era hiring boom, subsequent years of layoffs and a slowdown in hiring have combined to create nightmarish conditions for job seekers.

“It’s truly a bloodbath,” said Rick Dolishny, a project manager based in Ottawa who has spent about 16 months searching for a new gig. Dolishny took a break from the corporate world in 2024 to open up a glamping retreat near Algonquin Provincial Park. When he tried to get back into tech, he hit a brick wall. Five hundred job applications later, he has yet to receive an offer.

Dolishny isn’t alone. Many people looking for jobs in the tech industry in Canada are finding themselves hundreds of applications deep. On the rare occasions they do hear back from a prospective employer, they face multiple rounds of interviews before most often being rejected or simply ghosted.

Data on the number of vacancies suggests why that might be happening. Canadian tech job postings on Indeed dropped significantly in mid-2023 and have remained low since, according to the job site. Even compared to pre-pandemic levels, the current number of vacancies in Canadian tech is noticeably lower. Last August, tech job postings on the site were 19 per cent lower than their February 2020 level.

That hiring slowdown and the huge number of people laid off in recent years has created “a bit of an imbalance” between the number of job seekers and the number of vacancies, said Nathan Wawruck, director of permanent placement services in tech for recruitment firm Robert Half in Vancouver.

During the early months of the pandemic, tech firms hired aggressively, he said, in part thanks to the abundance of capital sloshing around. As interest rates rose and investment dwindled, many firms realized they overhired. Layoffs and hiring slowdowns followed. That switch happened relatively quickly, Wawruck said, and “caught a few people by surprise.”

And the layoffs show no sign of letting up. On Wednesday, Amazon laid off 16,000 workers—on top of about 14,000 let go back in October. In Canada, Shopify has continued a steady drip of redundancies, while in Oct. 2025, Vancouver-based Hootsuite trimmed its headcount by 20 per cent.

An abundance of job seekers vying for fewer vacancies also means fewer cold calls from recruiters. “I would get recruiters hitting me on LinkedIn almost weekly,” said Adam, not their real name, a software developer working in Canada who has already spent about a year trying to find a new job. The Logic is not using their name as they are currently employed. These days, recruiters might message once every few months, they said.

Stephen, also not their real name, is another tech worker in Canada in the financial planning and analysis sector who has been job hunting for about a year amid concerns about their current employer’s financial situation. They compared the job market during the pandemic to the coinciding house-buying boom. Just as single-family homes were in demand back then, so were tech workers. They, too, received a lot of interest from recruiters back then. Now, they’re finding the job hunt far more challenging. The Logic is not identifying them as their current employer is unaware of their job search.

No longer able to rely on recruiters to do some of the leg work, many job seekers have turned to their networks to track down new opportunities. Stephen said they contacted roughly two dozen people who they felt they could talk to without risking tipping off their employer. That led to some conversations about possible roles and a handful of interviews, they said, but no offers.

With recruiters going quiet and their network not delivering, they turned to job boards. Here, Stephen fears, they’re competing with hundreds of applicants for each and every job. They’ve now submitted close to 100 applications and estimate they’ve had about a 10 per cent hit rate for screening conversations. Part of the reason for the low response rate, they believe, is that companies are being flooded with applicants in the first few days. “If the posting is up for a week, you’re already behind the 8-ball.”

Last April, LinkedIn found that about one-third of Canadian job seekers had been on the hunt for at least six months.

In the scramble for jobs, some tech workers are finding that their months-long search is consuming their lives. Meghan, also not their real name, who works in data analysis in Canada, has spent a year looking for a new role due to concerns about layoffs at their current employer. During that time they’ve completed roughly 40 job applications and done about a dozen interview loops. Each position, they’ve found, requires at least three or four interviews, including technical assessments. “I spent a lot of my time, more time than I have in previous years, interviewing without actually landing a role,” they said.

Stephen came close, once. After about 20 hours of interviews and technical assessments they were told they were the firm’s second choice. “To get silver, it really sucked,” they said.

There are some promising signs amidst the gloom. A survey by Robert Half found that about 48 per cent of 250 tech hiring managers across Canada intended to increase their staffing in the first half of this year. Only 13 per cent predicted a drop, while the remainder planned to keep their staffing levels flat.

The companies that don’t plan to hire, said Wawruck, will likely replace anyone who leaves. That doesn’t necessarily mean tit-for-tat replacements, he added. “They may look at bringing somebody in with the new skills related to AI or data science,” he said, predicting that roles in these areas will add net-new positions.

AI-focused jobs are already outperforming the rest of the tech industry, according to data from Indeed. Postings for machine learning engineers and other positions directly related to AI in Canada are outperforming other tech roles. Software engineer job postings have dropped 51 per cent since early 2020, for example, while specialized AI roles more than doubled in the same period. The salaries of those working in AI also reflect that demand.

There’s also good news for people with more experience. The number of tech openings for senior-level roles on Indeed was tracking five per cent ahead of pre-pandemic levels early last year, while junior-level positions were down 25 per cent from five years prior. “New grads are definitely finding it tougher,” said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist with Indeed. Like Wawruck, he’s not expecting the tech job market to get much worse—but he’s not expecting a huge surge in hiring, either. 

In the meantime, job seekers are getting more creative and more focused to land their next gig, said Wawruck. Meghan said they planned to get even more targeted in their approach, bringing down their total number of applications from dozens per year to maybe just a dozen in 2026.

After striking out more than 500 times, Dolishny is also planning a change of approach. “I’m going to lean in on my age and my experience and my battle scars,” he said. “In my experience, startups are desperate for people with experience.”