How to Break Into Vancouver's Tech Industry in 2025

A Practical Guide for Students and New Grads

The Vancouver tech job market has grown up.

What used to be a sleepy hub of game studios and a few telecom giants has matured into a competitive, diversified industry. Today, major players in cloud infrastructure, AI, fintech, and SaaS call the city home, hiring year-round across development, data, design, and product roles.

But opportunity brings competition—especially for students and new grads. Getting noticed in 2025 requires more than a strong GPA and a GitHub profile. You need to understand the hiring landscape, time your moves, and—crucially—present yourself in a way that shows you're ready to contribute on day one.

That's where this guide comes in. Whether you're finishing up your first internship or preparing to graduate from UBC, SFU, BCIT, or another local school, here's a deep dive into how to land a tech job in Vancouver right now—and how ResumeLM can help sharpen your edge along the way.

The Hiring Environment in Vancouver, 2025

Vancouver is still one of Canada's fastest-growing tech markets. Big names like Amazon, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple all maintain large engineering teams in the city, while startups like Clio, Trulioo, and Dapper Labs have proven local companies can scale globally. There's also growing demand in sectors like health tech, clean tech, and AI—areas bolstered by both private capital and government support.

But entry-level hiring has changed.

Most companies expect applicants—especially in software engineering and data science—to arrive with hands-on experience: internships, co-op terms, or personal projects with real-world scope. The expectation isn't perfection—it's applied learning. If you haven't built anything outside the classroom, it'll be difficult to stand out.

And the bar is only getting higher.

1. Internships and Co-op: The New Baseline

In the Vancouver market, co-op isn't optional. It's the default.

UBC and SFU students benefit from strong co-op programs that feed directly into local employers. If you're enrolled in one of these, make use of every work term possible. Employers understand co-op roles come with a learning curve, but they still evaluate you like they would a junior developer—on attitude, communication, and delivery.

For students outside structured co-op programs, internships are still attainable, but require more outreach. Use LinkedIn, company career pages, GitHub job boards, and aggregators like Simplify to track roles. Many Vancouver-based companies post openings as early as September for summer internships, so planning ahead matters.

And if you don't land an internship? Don't panic. Build your own.

• Ship a small SaaS project
• Redesign an open-source tool
• Do a freelance job for a local business

It's not just about checking a box—it's about building evidence that you know how to learn and execute.

2. Where to Actually Find Opportunities

Let's cut through the noise.

If you're looking for job or internship postings in Vancouver, here's where to start:

LinkedIn: Still the most-used hiring platform for tech roles. Filter by "Vancouver" or "Remote - Canada" and save searches to stay updated.

BCJobs.ca: A local favorite that often includes mid-sized employers and startups.

Built In Vancouver: Highlights active roles at local and regional startups, many of which fly under the radar on mainstream boards.

University Portals: If you're at UBC, SFU, BCIT, or Northeastern, your school's internal job board often gets early-access postings.

GitHub Lists: For internship-specific leads, public repos like "Canada Tech Internships 2025" aggregate opportunities from real-time community input.

But don't rely solely on applying cold.

Reach out. Ask former interns or co-op students at your target companies what worked for them. Look up recruiters. If a job has been up for weeks, there's a good chance you'll be buried unless someone flags your name.

This is where your tools matter. With ResumeLM, you can instantly tailor your résumé to a specific job post—highlighting the exact skills, experience, and phrasing that applicant tracking systems (ATS) scan for. It's one less thing to worry about when you're applying to dozens of roles.

3. Resumes That Actually Get Read

Let's talk about what doesn't work first.

Most student résumés are too long, too vague, and too unfocused. Employers aren't impressed by five bullet points about coursework or laundry lists of technologies with no context. You have seconds to grab attention—and you have to make those seconds count.

A good technical résumé in 2025 should:

• Be 1–2 pages max
• Include only what's relevant to the role
• Emphasize outcomes, not responsibilities
• Include links to live projects, not just GitHub repos

Instead of:

"Built a web app using React and Firebase."

Say:

"Developed and deployed a task-tracking app in React/Firebase used by 100+ students during exam season."

Every bullet should answer: What did you build? What problem did it solve? Why does it matter?

ResumeLM helps with this by guiding you through structured achievement-based bullet writing and offering AI-generated examples based on your role, tools, and context. It also makes sure your résumé passes ATS parsing tests—so your application doesn't get filtered out before a human sees it.

4. Building a Portfolio That Signals "Hire Me"

In competitive markets, your portfolio isn't a nice-to-have—it's your proof of work.

For developers, that often means a few polished projects hosted on GitHub or deployed live (on Vercel, Netlify, or a personal domain). For data folks, it might be notebooks, dashboards, or even blog posts explaining analysis.

What matters is that the projects:

1. Are well-documented
2. Solve a real or interesting problem
3. Use technologies relevant to your target roles
4. Show progression over time (not just one course assignment)

Bonus points if you've worked with others—contributing to open-source, working on a team, or participating in a hackathon is a strong signal.

Once you've built a few things, include direct links in your résumé and LinkedIn. Don't just say GitHub: github.com/you—link to the projects that matter. ResumeLM makes this easy by letting you embed contextual project links directly under each role or experience.

5. Networking (Without Being Weird About It)

Here's a hard truth: many job offers in Vancouver don't come from public postings—they come from connections, referrals, and quiet conversations.

But "networking" doesn't have to mean awkward small talk at a career fair.

It can be:

• Attending local meetups like TechVancouver, React Vancouver, or Launch Academy events
• Joining communities like the Vancouver Developers Slack or Women Who Code Vancouver
• Reaching out to alumni from your program on LinkedIn with a specific, respectful message
• Volunteering at conferences, hackathons, or industry events where engineers and recruiters are present

When you do reach out to someone, don't ask for a job. Ask about their role. Their path. Their advice. If the conversation goes well, the door to an internal referral opens naturally.

Follow up. Be professional. Keep a list. And when you're applying to the same companies your contacts work at, ask if they'd be willing to pass your application along.

6. Interviews: Preparation > Perfection

If your résumé gets you in the door, your preparation gets you the offer.

Here's what Vancouver companies typically include in the interview process for entry-level tech roles:

1. Coding assessment (HackerRank, Codility, etc.) — LeetCode easy/medium level
2. Technical phone screen — often focused on data structures, REST, or language-specific questions
3. System design or take-home project — for more senior internships or new grad roles
4. Behavioral interview — STAR method answers, focused on communication, adaptability, and teamwork

You don't need to be perfect—but you do need to practice.

Mock interviews help. So does talking through your projects aloud. So does reviewing common questions related to the stack the company uses.

And when it's over? Send a thank-you note. Not a 500-word essay. Just a few thoughtful lines that show you care about the opportunity.

Final Thoughts: Play the Long Game

You might not land your dream job right out of school. That's okay.

Plenty of successful Vancouver engineers started with contract work, short-term internships, or entry-level roles at lesser-known companies. The important thing is to build momentum—every project, job, or connection compounds over time.

If you're putting in the effort, improving every month, and using tools like ResumeLM to make smarter applications, you're already doing better than most.

This industry rewards persistence. You don't need 50 companies to say yes. You need one.

Ready to Get Started?

ResumeLM was built for students and new grads looking to break into tech. With AI-powered tailoring, keyword optimization, and portfolio-ready formatting, it's everything you need to craft your best résumé in 2025.

Give it a try—for free—and let your work speak for itself.