While many Gen Z graduates are struggling in the labour market, sending resumes to dozens of employers every day and often never hearing back, Aida Ramezani had the opposite experience.
After completing a PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto in December, the 28-year-old immigrant from Iran said she was “picky” during her job search, looking for roles that uniquely matched her interests and values.
“I didn’t do a massive job search just sending my CV to different places,” she said. “I really was very meticulous about job description and the company.”
What sets her apart from the rest? Ramezani is among a group of Canadian graduates who currently have the upper hand in the job market because they are highly skilled in researching or developing artificial intelligence.
With more companies now deploying the technology to boost productivity, demand for top AI talent, including developers and machine learning engineers, has been surging.
According to Brendon Bernard, senior economist at job search website Indeed, postings for those kinds of jobs have been seeing the strongest growth on the platform over the past three years, among other tech-related roles.
“Someone coming into the job market with really cutting-edge skills that are leaning into AI, this type of person is going to be at a pretty advantageous position regardless of the labour market,” he said.
That advantage also shows up in pay, Bernard added, with the median salary of machine-learning engineer job postings standing at $224,000 on Indeed. That number is $146,000 for AI developers.
By comparison, the median full-time worker in Canada had an income of $70,200, according to Statistics Canada data from 2024.
Since the spring of 2024, the unemployment rate in Canada has remained above the pre-pandemic average of six per cent, according to Statistics Canada. For youth aged 15 to 24, who have been hit hardest by the weakening of the labour market, the jobless rate was 13.4 per cent in May.
“The labour market for new grads in general has been in stasis,” said Viet Vu, manager of economic research at The Dais, a public policy and leadership think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“Not a lot of layoffs are happening, but not a whole lot of hiring is happening either. And most of that can be explained by the economic and trade anxiety many companies feel that render them unable to actually invest in growth or hiring.”
Vu added that, even within the computer science field, job market outcomes are split.
Tech companies have been cutting jobs en masse as they ramp up investments in AI.
While top Canadian graduates have plenty of opportunities, going to work for major AI developers like Anthropic or OpenAI, others are struggling to compete for whatever tech jobs are left.
“While we’re seeing this rise and boom in AI, the reality continues to be that finding financing and investment in tech companies in general has become a lot harder,” said Vu, adding that there’s “more graduates than ever competing for those relatively fewer jobs.”
Students working with professors who are part of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research AI chairs program at several universities tend to see the best results, according to Vu. That program, which aims to recruit the world’s top AI researchers, has just received a $24 million investment by the federal government.
One of the few places Ramezani applied to was Layer 6, TD Bank’s AI research centre.
She said she learned about it during university, and was hired permanently in March as a research machine learning scientist. She’s now helping the bank develop new applications for agentic AI, where artificial intelligence is used to complete tasks with minimal human intervention.
“Starting a PhD, getting into (the University of Toronto), it wasn’t the easy path,” said Ramezani, who completed her undergraduate degree in Tehran before moving to Toronto in 2020, in the middle of a COVID lockdown. But it paid off.
A role with the same title as Ramezani’s posted earlier this month on TD’s hiring website had a salary range between $140,000 and $250,000.
TD acquired Layer 6 in 2018 with just 17 employees. Today, the AI lab has about 100 workers.
Nearly 40 per cent of their new hires since acquisition have been recent graduates. Within the research machine learning scientist segment, that number increases to 70 per cent.
The lab likes to pick its talent from its own backyard, quite literally.
Located at the MaRS Discovery District, across from the University of Toronto’s St. George campus, Layer 6 brings on two to four interns from the school’s Master of Science in Applied Computing program every year.
“We are looking for a global strategy, of course, and so (the University of Toronto) is one of the primary schools where we source talent,” said Maksims Volkovs, senior vice president and chief AI scientist at TD.
Volkovs is a University of Toronto alumnus himself and was taught by Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI.”
“But we have established collaborations with a number of other academic institutions like Waterloo, UBC, McGill,” Volkovs went on. “Also, we recently opened up an office in New York and we’ve been working with Columbia and (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).”
One of the biggest challenges for Canadian employers like Layer 6 — and for the country as a whole — is guaranteeing that valuable AI talent stays here.
“Where I think (Canada’s AI) strategy falls short is … to ensure that opportunities are available so that those top graduates are not put in a difficult position of having to consider, let’s say, working in Canada for significantly lower pay or moving to the States where they might receive a lot more in compensation,” said Vu.
A study by The Dais found that tech workers in the U.S. were paid 46 per cent more than tech workers in Canada, even after considering purchasing power differences. That’s equivalent to almost $40,000 more, according to the study.
Volkovs said TD is always working to ensure that the compensation they offer is aligned with the rest of the industry.
He declined to say what the lab’s retention rate is, but said that its “inclusive” culture could be the reason people choose to stick around.
He called Layer 6 “a typical Canadian story,” where there’s a diverse workforce from different countries and backgrounds.
“I think that has been really resonating with people that we hire.”
To Noël Vouitsis, a senior research machine learning scientist at Layer 6, working for “big tech” in the U.S. was never the primary goal.
Vouitsis, 28, was hired full-time after completing an internship with the lab while pursuing a Master of Science in Applied Computing at the University of Toronto. He just bought a place in downtown Toronto and doesn’t have plans to go anywhere.
“My friends, my family, they’re all here,” he said. “My roots are here.”
Having just joined Layer 6, Ramezani said she’s also happy where she landed.
“For now, I would like to think about what’s ahead of me at Layer 6 and how I can grow here. So that’s my vision for the moment.”
