Student Employment Opportunities
**2025 Spring/Summer Student**
Summary
Are you an engineering or engineering technology, environmental sciences or project management student interested in the construction management field? Are you excited by the prospect of supporting infrastructure projects at one of Canada’s military bases in Alberta? We are looking for students in the above-mentioned fields of study who have strong critical thinking, writing, and interpersonal skills to join our team in Cold Lake, Alberta.
Defence Construction Canada (DCC) is a dynamic and fast-paced Crown corporation. Our more than 1300 employees—all civilians—work in offices across the country, often co-located on military bases. Our clients include the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence’s infrastructure and environment programs. Our corporate values are dedication, collaboration, competence, and fairness. These values guide our actions, the way we make decisions and how we conduct our business. To help us lead the way, we are looking for open minded, highly motivated, ready to learn, and reliable individuals.
As part of DCC’s ongoing efforts to recruit a diverse workforce, the National Student Program offers students a 4–8-month work experience term. This is a great opportunity for students to be exposed to a work environment and to expand their skills.
What You Can Expect
You will build a network of colleagues in a variety of disciplines who are passionate about the work they do and will lead and mentor you in a high-performing environment. Successful candidates will gain office and field experience in construction, environmental and/or project management work, and may support in the following tasks:
What We Are Looking For
Who We Are Looking For
Cold Lake
The City of Cold Lake is located in Alberta’s Lakeland and nestled on the shore of Alberta’s seventh largest lake. The area is known for its many pristine lakes and forests which offer excellent camping, fishing, water sports, and many other recreational activities. Cold Lake also has modern recreation and sport facilities, a nearby alpine ski hill, as well as urban and rural trail systems. Defence Construction Canada (DCC) Cold Lake is located at 4 Wing which is an air force base operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force and home to Western Canada’s fighter jets. The Cold Lake air base is known as Canada’s busiest fighter base and the 1.17-million-hectare Cold Lake Air Weapons Range provides opportunity for Canadian and International Air Force training. Working at DCC Cold Lake offers opportunities to support in planning, construction, and maintenance of the infrastructure for the airfield runways, ramp, and hangars as well as other supporting facilities and utilities at both the base and the nearby air weapons range.
To begin a career with Defence Construction Canada (DCC), you must be a Canadian Citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. As a condition of employment with DCC, a minimum reliability security status clearance is required and some roles may require secret security status clearance.
DCC is responsible for the Personnel Security Clearance process. Typically to be eligible for a "Reliability" clearance, you must have five years of verifiable background information and to be eligible for a "Secret" clearance, you must have 10 years of verifiable background information. The process usually involves reference inquiries, verification of qualifications, criminal records checks, and credit checks (as required) and may require fingerprints. For more information about obtaining a security clearance, please review the Standard on Security Screening.
The appropriate security clearance is a condition of employment and it is the candidate’s or employee’s responsibility to ensure, they are able to obtain and maintain their required security level clearance to begin or continue their employment with DCC. Failure to obtain or maintain, the appropriate level of security clearance means either the candidate or employee will not receive a job offer, the conditional offer will be rendered null and void or their employment will be terminated with cause. A thorough security clearance process will be applied to all candidates or employees considered for an appointment; this process includes inquiries, verifications and assessments regarding matters such as, but not limited to:
Be part of a diverse and inclusive workplace!
At DCC, we are committed to ensuring everyone has a voice and can be their authentic selves in our workplace. We actively encourage applications from all, including but not limited to, women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, visible minorities and members of the LGBTQ2+ community. We also welcome applications from those who are not Canadian citizens who are eligible to work in Canada and have at least 5 years of verifiable background information.
DCC is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all requests for accommodation based on a medical contraindication, religion or another prohibited ground for discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Should you require accommodation, please email careers@dcc-cdc.gc.ca.