NAICS 541330Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market1 market record

Engineering services

SoftwareAEC Design & Engineering Software 5413

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in applying principles of engineering in the design, development and utilization of machines, materials, instruments, structures, processes and systems. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 11,910
Under 10 employeesA: 74%
Establishments · USA: 62,590
Employment · USA: 1,199,635
Payroll · USA: $126.9B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–47,46863%

5–91,34911%

10–191,1289%

20–491,1179%

50–995244%

100–1992182%

200–499851%

500+210%

Of 11,910 Canadian establishments with employees, 74% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario4,11535%

Alberta3,10826%

British Columbia1,93616%

Quebec1,64214%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, US · opened 2020

83.3%

1 year

64%

3 years

50.8%

5 years

34.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 541, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionlow capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 541 Professional, scientific and technical services

Professional licensing is the barrier and the principal's time is the ceiling. Firms are built from a book of clients, and an aging partner group makes acquisition and succession the common entry.

Who sets the price: The firm, by reputation, against hourly-rate comparison.
The software it runs on: Practice management, time and billing, and a specialist tool per profession — the densest vertical-software territory in the economy.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Defence Services & C5ISR IntegrationOne thing must be true

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

The demand is real, large and paid on time by one buyer. The Department of Defense obligated $40.11B of contracts coded to NAICS 541330 in FY2025 [A, USAspending], and $8.81B of it — 22% — went to small businesses [A], so this is not a market sealed shut to anyone under a billion dollars. The mechanism that keeps an ordinary entrant out is that the buyer does not buy from strangers. Booz Allen took about 84% of its FY2026 revenue through 2,426 task orders on IDIQ vehicles [A]: the work is competed among firms already on a vehicle, and getting on one takes past performance on federal contracts that a new firm by definition lacks. Around that sits a stack of eligibility costs paid before the first dollar — personnel and facility security clearances that CACI's 10-K calls 'difficult and time-consuming to obtain' [A], DFARS cost-accounting and audit regimes, and a CMMC third-party cyber certification phasing in from November 2025 to November 2028 that Leidos says decides whether it can bid at all [A]. Scale does not buy much margin either: on FY2025–26 filings operating margin ran from 3.3% at Amentum to 12.3% at Leidos [A, derived], and the primes keep consolidating — CACI paid $2.64B for ARKA in March 2026, Amentum was formed by merging with Jacobs' government business, and KBR is spinning off its mission-technology arm [A]. The reachable lane is therefore a cleared subcontractor or a small-business set-aside holder working under a prime, which is a services firm built around people who already hold clearances and a prime who sponsors them. Canada has the same shape at smaller scale — Calian, the nearest listed Canadian comparable, reported C$774M of FY2025 revenue across defence, health and other lines [A]. Eligibility, not capital, decides it: even a funded entrant waits years for clearances and past performance.

NAICS 54133012 vendors named14 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 5413 Architectural, engineering and related services

AEC Design & Engineering SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK)

Autodesk's AECO line alone runs at $3.583B and grew 22%, Trimble's AECO segment adds $1.499B and Bentley carries $1.46B of ARR in infrastructure engineering, and the file formats are the lock — RVT and DGN are read properly only by their owners. An entrant does not compete on features but on interoperability it does not control. Note the sizing here is a floor of $5.1B from Autodesk's and Trimble's disclosed AECO revenue alone, not a market estimate.

NAICS 54134 vendors named6 sourced figuresOpen →

And what every business buys · 33 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 11

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
L3HarrisNYSE:LHX	Engineering services541330	$21.9B	1/11
LeidosNYSE:LDOS	Engineering services541330	$17.2B	2/11
AmentumPrivate	Engineering services541330	$14.4B	3/11
Booz Allen HamiltonNYSE:BAH	Engineering services541330	$11.2B	4/11
CACI InternationalNYSE:CACI	Engineering services541330	$9.6B	5/11
SAICPrivate	Engineering services541330	$7.3B	6/11
ParsonsPSN	Engineering services541330	$6.4B	7/11
CalianTSX:CGY	Engineering services541330	$774M	8/11
BAE SystemsBAESY	Engineering services541330	—	9/11
General DynamicsNYSE:GD	Engineering services541330	—	10/11
PeratonPrivate	Engineering services541330	—	11/11

Who works here

The occupations employed in Professional, scientific and technical services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Judges, lawyers and Quebec notaries One industry 71.1%

Computer, software and Web designers and developers Mostly one sector 55.4%

Architects, urban planners and land surveyors Mostly one sector 54.7%

Technical occupations in architecture, drafting, surveying, geomatics and meteorology Mostly one sector 51.2%

Photographers and support occupations in arts and culture Mostly one sector 50.3%

Graphic and interior designers Mostly one sector 48.9%

Civil and mechanical engineers Mostly one sector 45.2%

Electrical, electronics and computer engineers Mostly one sector 40.3%

Managers in engineering, architecture, science and information systems Mostly one sector 40.2%

Natural resources engineers Mostly one sector 39.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 29.6%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 24.9%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 23.1%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 16.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 16.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 16.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 11.8%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 11.5%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 9%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 74% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →