Vancouverruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Technology
Amazon, Microsoft, Shopify, Slack, Hootsuite, Later
Vancouver's tech sector grew substantially on the back of US companies opening engineering offices here — same time zone as Seattle and San Francisco, with a far easier immigration route for international hires.
Film & visual effects
Sony Pictures Imageworks, Industrial Light & Magic, DNEG, Method Studios, Animal Logic
Known as Hollywood North, Vancouver is one of the largest production centres in North America, and the visual effects and animation studios are a major and unusually international employer.
Video games
Electronic Arts, Relic Entertainment, Blackbird Interactive, Phoenix Labs
EA's Burnaby studio has anchored a games cluster here for three decades, and the surrounding studios draw heavily on the same talent pool as the VFX houses.
Natural resources & mining finance
Teck Resources, Goldcorp legacy operations, Ritchie Bros, numerous TSX-V listings
Vancouver hosts an unusual concentration of mining company head offices and the specialist finance, legal and geology services around them — a legacy of the province's resource economy.
Ports, logistics & trade
Port of Vancouver, Seaspan, Westshore Terminals, DP World
The Port of Vancouver is Canada's largest and the primary Pacific gateway, which drives a substantial logistics, customs and trade-services economy across the region.
Clean technology
Ballard Power Systems, Svante, Carbon Engineering, Corvus Energy
British Columbia's carbon tax and hydroelectric power base have supported a genuine cleantech cluster, particularly in hydrogen fuel cells and carbon capture.
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