Management Engineering

By alternating school terms and paid co-op work terms throughout your degree, you can explore new career areas and types of employers as your career interests evolve.

Graduates often pursue careers in software development, big data analysis, and industrial engineering. They commonly work for research centres, technology companies, and more.

Recent graduates

• Product manager – Loblaw Digital
• Engineering program manager – Apple
• Data analyst – Wayfair
• Data scientist – Shopify
• Software development engineer – Amazon
• Senior manager, digital strategy – RBC Wealth Management
• Software developer, lead – Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
• Supply chain analyst – Weston Bakeries 
• Technical consultant – Bentley Canada
• Data & analytics consultant – KPMG

Possible professional designation

• Professional Engineer

Learn about the future of careers in business.

What is the difference between Management Engineering and a business program?

In a typical business degree program, you concentrate more on business functions such as accounting, finance, sales, human resources, and marketing and earn credits to qualify for professional designations such as Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA).

In contrast, Management Engineering provides more focus and greater depth in engineering design, science, and mathematics and deals with identifying and solving the problems that organizations face when deciding how to make better products and services how to run the business more efficiently and effectively. As a Management Engineering graduate, you’ll be eligible to apply for a professional engineering (PEng) designation.

Nevertheless, you’ll take a number of courses – required and electives – that may traditionally be found in business programs, covering topics such as economics, finance, organizational behaviour and design, management of technology, and entrepreneurship.

What is the difference between Management Engineering and Software Engineering?

Software Engineering applies computer science and engineering to design software systems. You’ll take lots of computer science and computer engineering courses at the interface of digital hardware and software, as well as core software engineering courses on software development.

In contrast, management engineers design, implement, and manage complex management systems. Increasingly, those management systems are implemented as software and information systems. Therefore, information/software systems design comprises a major theme area in Management Engineering, with a number of courses in computer science, software engineering, and information systems.

As a Management Engineering student, you’ll learn to solve large real-world problems of businesses and organizations that are implemented in software. As a Software Engineering student, you’ll earn to solve a wide range of software problems including low-level systems programming.

What is the difference between Management Engineering and Industrial Engineering?

According to the Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineers, industrial engineers design processes and systems that improve quality and productivity by eliminating waste of time, money, materials, energy, or other commodities. There are some similarities between management and industrial engineering programs, including a significant overlap in the type of courses in the two programs. In fact, management engineering could be considered a contemporary industrial engineering program.

While the Management Engineering curriculum has a large overlap with many industrial engineering programs at other universities, there are two main differences.

1. Industrial engineering programs vary in the extent to which they include information/software systems design. Waterloo’s Management Engineering program has a very strong information/software systems component, with perhaps the largest concentration of such courses than most industrial engineering programs in Canada.

2. Where industrial engineering has traditionally focused on the application of engineering methods to improve manufacturing and industry-related processes, management engineering broadens that focus to include other domains such as finance, business intelligence, health care, and information management.

Do I take classes with students from other engineering programs?

In general, you’ll likely be with the same students for most courses throughout the program. Usually, we’re able to schedule all of the Management Engineering students to be in the same classes. In later years, as you begin to take electives, you’ll likely find yourself in classes with students from other engineering programs.

What is the ratio of males to females in the program?

Each cohort of students is different, but females typically make up 40-50% of the students in Management Engineering. The first-year Management Engineering class in 2019 was about 46% female.