How to Apply to Imperial Oil

Key Takeaways

Apply through SAP SuccessFactors at jobs.exxonmobil.com/Imperial/ — the URL is the parent ExxonMobil domain but the requisitions and hiring teams are Imperial Oil Limited.
Imperial is 69.6% owned by ExxonMobil but operates as a Canadian-listed public company (TSX/NYSE: IMO) with Canadian legal, tax, and regulatory frameworks. Offers, employment contracts, and benefits are Canadian.
Calgary HQ at 505 Quarry Park Boulevard SE is the corporate centre. Major operating sites are Kearl Oil Sands and Cold Lake (Alberta), Sarnia and Nanticoke refineries (Ontario), and Strathcona refinery and renewable diesel facility (Edmonton).
Brad Corson has been President and CEO since 2020. Strategic priorities under his tenure include the Strathcona renewable diesel project (largest in Canada, first production 2025), the Cold Lake debottleneck, sustained Kearl production above 300,000 bpd, and dividend continuity.
Indigenous hiring is a stated and structurally supported priority — formal internship and apprenticeship programs exist at Cold Lake and Kearl, and self-identification in the SuccessFactors profile is the gateway.
The interview process is structured, behavioral, and STAR-based. Safety culture, technical depth, and operations integrity orientation are the dominant evaluation themes.
Compensation is competitive within the Canadian energy sector. Annual bonus, RSU grants for management band, generous relocation, and a defined-benefit pension structure (for legacy plan members) are real differentiators against junior oil and gas competitors.
Be honest with yourself about cultural fit before applying: this is a process-driven, hierarchical, long-tenure company in a heavy-oil business operating under Canadian climate policy. The work is technically demanding and consequential, but it is not a fit for every personality.
For upstream Alberta roles, rotational schedules (commonly 7/7 or 14/14, fly-in/fly-out from Edmonton or Calgary) are the norm. Confirm tolerance before pursuing.
Imperial reposts unfilled requisitions. Setting up broad job alerts catches reposts and second-chance opportunities that narrow filters miss.

About Imperial Oil

Imperial Oil Limited (TSX/NYSE: IMO) is one of Canada's largest integrated energy companies and a 69.6% owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corporation. Headquartered at 505 Quarry Park Boulevard SE in Calgary, Alberta, Imperial generates roughly CAD 50 billion in annual revenue and employs approximately 5,400 people across upstream, downstream, and chemical operations. The company has been part of Canadian life since 1880, making it the country's oldest publicly traded enterprise still operating under the same name. Imperial's three operating segments cover the full hydrocarbon value chain. Upstream production centers on northern Alberta's oil sands: the wholly owned Kearl Oil Sands project (which has now sustained output above 300,000 barrels per day), the Cold Lake in-situ steam-assisted gravity drainage operation (currently in a debottleneck expansion), and a 25% interest in Syncrude Canada (operated by Suncor since 2021). Downstream operations include three refineries — Sarnia (Ontario), Strathcona (Edmonton, Alberta), and Nanticoke (Ontario) — supplying the Esso, Mobil, and Esso Diesel brands across roughly 2,000 retail stations nationwide. The Sarnia chemical site produces polyethylene and other petrochemicals. Leadership is led by President and CEO Brad Corson, who joined from ExxonMobil in 2020 after roles in upstream technology and Asia-Pacific operations. Imperial's most consequential recent project is the Strathcona Renewable Diesel Facility, which began first production in 2025 as the largest renewable diesel plant in Canada, with capacity of approximately 20,000 barrels per day produced from low-carbon-intensity feedstocks and blue hydrogen. The company is also a founding member of the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of six oil sands producers pursuing a CAD 16.5 billion carbon capture and storage network targeting net-zero from operations by 2050. For candidates, Imperial occupies a distinctive position in the Canadian energy labour market. It is a Canadian-listed, Canadian-headquartered, Canadian-regulated company with deep community ties (especially in northern Alberta and Sarnia–Lambton), but it operates with the technical standards, safety systems, and engineering discipline of ExxonMobil — including the Operations Integrity Management System (OIMS), Loss Prevention System (LPS), and Global Project Execution methodology. Compensation is competitive within the Canadian energy sector, dividend continuity has been preserved through every commodity cycle since 1881, and internal mobility into ExxonMobil's global network is a real (though not guaranteed) possibility for high performers. Honest framing: this is heavy oil and oil sands work in a carbon-constrained policy environment, so the cultural fit conversation matters, and a meaningful portion of the workforce lives and works in remote camp-based rotations at Kearl and Cold Lake.

Application Process

1
Step 1
Step 1 — Find the role on the Imperial-branded SuccessFactors careers portal at jobs.exxonmobil.com/Imperial/. The URL deliberately sits inside the ExxonMobil domain because Imperial shares its parent's SAP SuccessFactors instance, but the requisitions, hiring teams, and offer letters are Imperial Oil Limited. Use the Country filter to constrain to Canada, and the Department filter to narrow to your discipline (Engineering, Operations & Maintenance, Geoscience, Commercial, Information Technology, Health Safety Security & Environment, Public & Government Affairs, Finance, etc.).
2
Step 2
Step 2 — Create a candidate profile in SuccessFactors. You will be asked for full legal name, contact information, work eligibility status (Canadian citizen, permanent resident, work permit holder, or none), preferred location(s), and a resume upload. The system parses your PDF or Word resume into structured fields — review these fields carefully because parser errors are the single most common reason qualified candidates get auto-screened out. Plan on 30–45 minutes for the initial profile build.
3
Step 3
Step 3 — Complete the role-specific application. SuccessFactors will surface knockout questions tied to the requisition: legal work authorization in Canada without sponsorship, willingness to work a rotational schedule (commonly 7-on/7-off or 14-on/14-off for Kearl and Cold Lake), willingness to relocate, professional designation status (P.Eng., CPA, CFA, GIT, EIT), security clearance eligibility for certain roles, and driver's license class for field positions. Answer these honestly — misrepresenting any item is grounds for offer rescission later.
4
Step 4
Step 4 — Submit and acknowledge the privacy notice. Imperial uses a Canadian-law-governed PIPEDA privacy notice and explicitly asks for consent to share data with the broader ExxonMobil affiliate network for cross-affiliate role consideration. Saying yes does not commit you to anything but does open the door to U.S.-based ExxonMobil opportunities if your skills align.
5
Step 5
Step 5 — Initial screen. For technical roles, expect a 30-minute phone or Microsoft Teams conversation with a Talent Acquisition Advisor, typically within two to four weeks of submission for in-demand disciplines (process engineering, controls, geoscience, data science) and longer for general professional roles. The screen covers work authorization, compensation expectations, location flexibility, and a high-level walkthrough of two or three resume highlights.
6
Step 6
Step 6 — Technical and behavioral interviews. Imperial uses a structured behavioral interview model rooted in ExxonMobil's competency framework. You will typically face two to four rounds: a technical/discipline interview, a behavioral interview built around STAR-format questions (Situation, Task, Action, Result), a panel with the hiring manager and a cross-functional peer, and for senior roles a final conversation with a department head or general manager. Engineering candidates should expect to defend a specific past project in technical depth.
7
Step 7
Step 7 — Pre-employment requirements. Conditional offers trigger a background check (criminal record, education verification, employment verification, and for safety-sensitive roles a credit check), a pre-employment medical (often including a respirator fit test and audiometric baseline for field roles), and a Canadian Energy Sector pre-employment drug and alcohol test. The drug test is non-negotiable for any safety-sensitive position covered by the Canadian Model for Providing a Safe Workplace.
8
Step 8
Step 8 — Offer, relocation, and start date. Imperial offers are written under Canadian law with a defined base salary, annual bonus target (typically 8–25% depending on level), restricted stock unit grants for management band roles, and a relocation package that for Calgary or Sarnia hires is genuinely generous (full move, temporary housing, spousal job search support). Standard start dates are the first or fifteenth of the month, and onboarding includes a multi-day Calgary or site-based orientation covering OIMS, LPS, and culture.

Resume Tips for Imperial Oil

recommended

Lead with measured outcomes, not responsibilities

Lead with measured outcomes, not responsibilities. Imperial's hiring philosophy — inherited from ExxonMobil — rewards candidates who can quantify impact. 'Reduced flare events at Sarnia ULSD unit by 38% over 14 months by recommissioning the recycle compressor surge controller' beats 'responsible for unit reliability' every time. If you don't have hard numbers, use proxies: percentage improvements, dollars saved, days of downtime avoided, hectares reclaimed, audit findings closed.

recommended

Use Canadian English spelling and Canadian conventions throughout

Use Canadian English spelling and Canadian conventions throughout. 'Honour,' 'colour,' 'metre,' 'tonne,' 'realised' — these signal cultural fit and are noticed. List your professional designations the Canadian way: P.Eng. (Alberta) or P.Eng. (Ontario) with the issuing association (APEGA, PEO, EGBC), and your status (Member-in-Training, Engineer-in-Training, full P.Eng.). For accountants, CPA, CA designation with provincial body. For geoscience, P.Geo. with APEGA or APGO.

recommended

Surface oil sands or heavy oil experience explicitly if you have it

Surface oil sands or heavy oil experience explicitly if you have it. Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), cyclic steam stimulation (CSS), bitumen froth treatment, paraffinic froth treatment (PFT), tailings management, mine planning, and water treatment are all Kearl/Cold Lake/Syncrude-relevant terms. Imperial recruiters search SuccessFactors for these keywords. If your background is conventional oil and gas only, do not invent oil sands experience — instead, demonstrate transferable fundamentals (multiphase flow, thermal processes, environmental compliance).

recommended

Mirror the requisition language carefully

Mirror the requisition language carefully. SuccessFactors does keyword-based ranking on candidate profile fields. If the posting says 'Aspen HYSYS,' do not write 'process simulation software' — write 'Aspen HYSYS.' If the posting says 'Smart Plant 3D,' write 'SmartPlant 3D' or 'SP3D' as it appears. Same applies for SAP, Maximo, Pi Historian, OSIsoft, MATLAB, Python, R, GIS/ArcGIS, Petrel, Eclipse, CMG, and OFM.

recommended

For operations and maintenance roles, lead with safety credentials

For operations and maintenance roles, lead with safety credentials. CSTS (Construction Safety Training System), OSSA (Oil Sands Safety Association regional orientation), CSO (Common Safety Orientation, the Energy Safety Canada standard that replaced OSSA), H2S Alive, First Aid/CPR, fall protection, and confined space entry are baseline. List trade tickets prominently if you have them: Red Seal Power Engineer (1st through 4th Class is meaningful for Imperial — Cold Lake hires heavily in this discipline), Industrial Mechanic Millwright, Instrumentation Technician, and Heavy Duty Mechanic.

recommended

Address rotational work history and remote-camp tolerance directly if applying f

Address rotational work history and remote-camp tolerance directly if applying for upstream Alberta roles. Imperial cares whether you have worked a rotation before because the attrition rate for first-time rotation workers is meaningful. A line such as 'Worked 14/14 rotation at Suncor Firebag 2019–2022, fly-in/fly-out from Calgary' is a positive signal.

recommended

If you are an Indigenous candidate, self-identify in the SuccessFactors voluntar

If you are an Indigenous candidate, self-identify in the SuccessFactors voluntary self-identification section and consider explicitly noting community affiliation in your cover letter. Imperial maintains formal Indigenous internship and apprenticeship pipelines (the Cold Lake Plant Operations Indigenous Internship Program is a recurring requisition) and has community benefit agreements with Fort McKay First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Cold Lake First Nations, and Beaver Lake Cree Nation. Self-identification opens those pipelines without obligation.

recommended

Keep the resume to two pages for early-career and three pages maximum for senior

Keep the resume to two pages for early-career and three pages maximum for senior roles. SuccessFactors handles longer documents technically, but Imperial recruiters and hiring managers consistently report that beyond three pages, signal-to-noise drops. Use a clean, single-column layout with standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Garamond) at 10–11 point. Do not use tables, text boxes, headers/footers, or graphics — they break parser fidelity and you will lose keyword credit on items the parser cannot extract.

recommended

Include a one or two sentence professional summary at the top that names the dis

Include a one or two sentence professional summary at the top that names the discipline, the years of experience, and one signature accomplishment. Skip the objective statement — it is a dated convention that consumes premium real estate. Save 'objective' for the cover letter if you write one.

recommended

For new graduates and interns, lead with the institution, degree, GPA (if 3

For new graduates and interns, lead with the institution, degree, GPA (if 3.5+ on a 4.0 scale or equivalent), expected or actual graduation date, and any technical electives that map to the role (process control, reservoir engineering, geomechanics, machine learning). Imperial's intern and co-op program is a primary feeder into full-time hiring, and academic record matters disproportionately at this stage.

ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting (shared ExxonMobil/Imperial instance)

Imperial Oil's career portal at jobs.exxonmobil.com/Imperial/ is a branded view into ExxonMobil's enterprise SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management deployment. The Imperial-only requisition pool is filtered server-side, but the underlying applicant tracking system, candidate profile schema, parser, and screening tools are SAP SuccessFactors. This means the same parser quirks and keyword-ranking behavior that affect ExxonMobil applications affect Imperial applications. Verified live April 2026.

Submit a clean, single-column PDF or Word resume — the SuccessFactors parser handles both formats but is brittle on multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, and embedded images. Test by uploading and then immediately reviewing the parsed profile fields; if your job titles, dates, or company names are missing or scrambled, redesign your resume and resubmit.
Build out the structured profile fields fully even after a successful resume parse. SuccessFactors keyword search runs against the structured fields (work history, education, certifications, skills) more aggressively than against the resume text itself. A complete profile with explicit skills tags ranks higher in recruiter searches.
Use exact certification and software names as they appear in the requisition. SuccessFactors does not do strong synonym matching — 'P.E.' will not match 'P.Eng.' and 'Aspen Plus' will not match 'AspenPlus.' Mirror the posting verbatim.
Set up job alerts on the Imperial portal with broad criteria (location: Canada, department: your discipline) rather than narrow alerts. Imperial reposts requisitions when initial applicant pools are weak, and broad alerts catch reposts that narrow alerts miss.
Apply within 7 to 10 days of posting for the strongest consideration window. SuccessFactors timestamps applications, and Imperial Talent Acquisition typically begins screening the initial batch within two weeks — late applicants are reviewed only if the early batch does not produce a hire.
Voluntarily complete the self-identification questions (Indigenous status, gender, persons with disabilities, members of visible minorities). This data is held confidentially and is used for Employment Equity Act compliance and to route applicants into targeted pipelines (Indigenous internship, women in STEM, persons with disabilities accommodations) without affecting baseline screening.
If you are reapplying after a prior application, refresh your profile completely rather than relying on the old data. Recruiters see profile last-updated dates and a stale profile reads as low engagement.
Do not apply to more than three or four open Imperial requisitions simultaneously. Imperial recruiters share notes across requisitions in the same SuccessFactors instance, and a candidate who applies to a dozen unrelated roles signals scattered interest. Be selective.

Interview Culture

Imperial's interview process is structured, evidence-based, and culturally inherited from ExxonMobil's global competency framework — but with a distinctly Canadian working tone.

Expect interviewers to be polite, direct, and patient; theatrical pressure tactics are not part of the playbook. What is part of the playbook is rigorous behavioral questioning rooted in the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result), often with a follow-up 'and what did you learn from that' or 'what would you do differently' designed to probe self-awareness. The core behavioral competencies Imperial evaluates are stable across disciplines: safety leadership (most important — this is genuinely a non-negotiable in oil and gas), analytical problem solving, judgment and decision making under uncertainty, teamwork and collaboration, communication (especially the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences), and continuous improvement orientation. Senior roles add strategic thinking, change leadership, and stakeholder management (including Indigenous community relations for upstream Alberta roles). For engineering and geoscience candidates, expect a technical interview that goes deeper than surface-level. A reservoir engineer might be asked to walk through material balance fundamentals, discuss SAGD steam-to-oil ratio optimization, or defend a specific recovery factor estimate from a past project. A process engineer at Sarnia might face questions on hydroprocessor catalyst cycle management, sour water stripping, or LP modeling for crude slate optimization. The pattern is consistent: pick one project from your resume, go three layers deep, and expect the interviewer to probe assumptions you may not have written down. For operations and maintenance roles at Kearl, Cold Lake, or the refineries, the interview centers on Loss Prevention System fluency. Be ready to discuss specific incidents you have witnessed or led the response to, what the immediate cause was, what the root cause was, and what controls were put in place. 'Stop work authority' is a phrase you should be comfortable with — Imperial expects every employee, including the newest hire, to exercise it without hesitation. For commercial, finance, and corporate roles in Calgary, expect a panel format with two to four interviewers across at least one round. Strategic thinking matters more than commodity-specific knowledge — Imperial hires generalists and trains them. A finance candidate might be asked to walk through how they would think about the value of a refinery debottleneck project, including how they would frame the ranges of uncertainty. Dress code for interviews is business professional in Calgary corporate (suit and tie or equivalent), business casual at Sarnia and Strathcona office buildings, and field-appropriate (clean smart casual, no hard hats required for the interview itself) for site-based interviews at Kearl or Cold Lake. Virtual interviews are standard for first and second rounds; final rounds for management band roles often involve travel to Calgary at Imperial's expense. Final note on culture: Imperial is genuinely a long-tenure company. The median tenure of professional staff is well above the Canadian energy industry average, and this comes through in interviews. Interviewers are often 15–25 year company veterans who have moved through three to five roles. They are looking for candidates who can imagine doing the same. Asking thoughtful questions about career path, internal mobility, mentorship, and the rotational program for early-career professionals reads well.

What Imperial Oil Looks For

Demonstrated, articulate commitment to safety as a personal value, not a slogan — candidates who can describe specific moments when they intervened on an unsafe condition or stopped work consistently advance further than candidates who treat safety as a checkbox.
Strong technical fundamentals in your discipline, demonstrated through depth on at least one signature project rather than breadth of name-dropping. Imperial would rather hire a candidate who deeply understands one complex thing than one who has shallow exposure to many.
Quantitative reasoning and comfort with uncertainty. The hydrocarbon business runs on probabilistic estimates (reserves, production forecasts, project economics, weather impacts), and Imperial wants people who can think in P10/P50/P90 terms without losing decision clarity.
Operations integrity mindset. Candidates who can speak to operating discipline — procedure adherence, management of change, mechanical integrity, process safety information — signal cultural fit for an OIMS-driven organization.
Continuous improvement orientation, especially for operations and engineering roles. Examples of bottleneck identification, reliability improvement, energy efficiency wins, or cost reduction initiatives carry weight.
Genuine willingness to work in or rotate to remote Alberta sites for upstream roles. Interviewers can tell when a candidate is privately hoping to stay in Calgary, and Kearl/Cold Lake hiring teams screen for actual rotation tolerance.
Cross-cultural competence and respect for Indigenous communities, especially for roles at Kearl (where the workforce includes significant participation from Fort McKay, Mikisew Cree, and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations) and Cold Lake (Cold Lake First Nations, Beaver Lake Cree Nation). This is increasingly evaluated for any role with community-facing responsibilities.
Comfort working within a structured, hierarchical, process-driven culture. Imperial is not a startup — it has clear chains of approval, formal review gates, and documented procedures for almost everything. Candidates who chafe against process do not thrive.
Long-term career thinking. Imperial's compensation, development, and pension structure reward tenure. Candidates who treat the role as a 12 to 18 month resume-builder are easy for interviewers to spot and screen out.
Ethics and judgment under pressure. Interviewers regularly probe with scenarios where business pressure conflicts with safety, environmental compliance, or regulatory disclosure obligations — Imperial wants candidates who answer the obvious right answer without rationalization.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Imperial Oil the same company as ExxonMobil?

No, but the relationship is closer than most parent-subsidiary structures. Imperial Oil Limited is a separate Canadian-incorporated public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE American under the ticker IMO. ExxonMobil owns 69.6% of the outstanding shares and the remainder trades publicly. Imperial has its own Board of Directors (with both ExxonMobil-affiliated and independent directors), its own CEO (Brad Corson), Canadian-resident senior leadership, Canadian operations, Canadian employees on Canadian employment contracts, and Canadian financial reporting. However, Imperial uses ExxonMobil's technology, project management methodology, safety systems, and shares the SAP SuccessFactors recruiting platform, which is why the careers portal lives at jobs.exxonmobil.com/Imperial/.

Where is Imperial Oil headquartered and where do most employees work?

Corporate headquarters is at 505 Quarry Park Boulevard SE in Calgary, Alberta — the Quarry Park campus south of downtown. Of approximately 5,400 total employees, the largest concentrations are at the Calgary corporate centre (commercial, finance, engineering, geoscience, IT, HR), the Kearl Oil Sands site north of Fort McMurray (operations, maintenance, engineering — predominantly rotational), the Cold Lake operation in northeast Alberta (operations, maintenance, in-situ engineering), the Sarnia refinery and chemical complex in Ontario (refining and petrochemicals operations), the Strathcona refinery in Edmonton (now also home to the renewable diesel facility), and the Nanticoke refinery in Ontario.

What ATS does Imperial Oil use?

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management, deployed on a shared instance with ExxonMobil. The Imperial-branded portal lives at jobs.exxonmobil.com/Imperial/ and filters the requisition view to Imperial-only roles. The candidate profile, resume parser, screening engine, and interview scheduling are all SuccessFactors features. Practical implication: standard SuccessFactors resume best practices apply (clean single-column layout, no tables or text boxes, exact keyword matching with the requisition, complete structured profile fields).

Does Imperial Oil sponsor work permits or visas for foreign candidates?

For most professional and operations roles, no — Imperial expects candidates to have existing legal work authorization in Canada (citizenship, permanent residency, valid work permit, or open IEC visa). For specialized senior technical roles where domestic talent is genuinely scarce, Imperial has historically used the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) and Intra-Company Transfer pathways, including for ExxonMobil affiliate transfers. If you require sponsorship, state this honestly in the SuccessFactors knockout question rather than hoping it will not be checked — sponsored hires happen but are the exception, not the rule.

What is the interview process like at Imperial Oil?

After the SuccessFactors application, the typical sequence is: a 30-minute screening call with a Talent Acquisition Advisor focused on work authorization, location, compensation expectations, and resume highlights; a technical or discipline-specific interview with a hiring manager and a senior peer; a behavioral interview built around STAR-format questions covering safety, teamwork, problem solving, and judgment; and for senior roles a final panel with a department head or general manager. The full cycle commonly runs four to eight weeks from application to offer, longer for senior or specialized roles. Virtual interviews are standard for early rounds; final rounds for management band roles often include Calgary travel at Imperial's expense.

What is Imperial Oil's stance on Indigenous hiring?

Imperial maintains formal Indigenous talent pipelines, particularly for upstream Alberta operations. The Cold Lake Plant Operations Indigenous Internship Program (which trains Power Engineers) is a recurring requisition, and Imperial has community benefit and procurement agreements with Fort McKay First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Cold Lake First Nations, and Beaver Lake Cree Nation, among others. Indigenous candidates are encouraged to self-identify in the SuccessFactors voluntary self-identification section, which routes applications into these targeted pipelines without affecting consideration for general requisitions. Self-identification is held confidentially and is voluntary.

Does Imperial Oil require rotational work for upstream roles?

Yes, for most operations and many engineering roles at Kearl Oil Sands and Cold Lake. Common schedules are 7-on/7-off and 14-on/14-off, with fly-in/fly-out transportation provided from Edmonton or Calgary. Camp accommodation, meals, and ground transportation are covered. Rotational work is not a fit for everyone — interviewers screen for tolerance because first-time rotation attrition is real. Some upstream technical and supervisory roles are residential (in Cold Lake, Bonnyville, Fort McMurray, or Calgary) rather than rotational, but those positions are a smaller share of the total.

What is Imperial Oil's compensation and benefits package like?

Compensation is competitive within the Canadian large-cap energy sector. Components typically include base salary benchmarked to industry surveys (Mercer, Hay Group), an annual cash bonus with target percentages ranging roughly from 8% for early professional roles to 25%+ for senior management, restricted stock unit grants for management band positions (denominated in Imperial Oil shares), comprehensive health and dental benefits effective on day one, a defined-contribution pension with employer match (legacy defined-benefit pension is closed to new entrants but continues for existing members), a generous vacation entitlement that grows with tenure, a relocation package for hires requiring a move, and an employee share purchase plan with company match.

How long does the Imperial Oil hiring process typically take?

From application submission to offer, four to eight weeks is typical for professional roles where the requisition has an active hiring manager and a focused candidate slate. For senior roles, specialized technical positions, or when a requisition has been re-opened due to a weak initial pool, the cycle can extend to twelve weeks or more. Pre-employment requirements — background check, medical, drug and alcohol test for safety-sensitive roles — typically add two to three weeks between offer acceptance and start date. Imperial communicates timelines clearly; if you have not heard back within four weeks of an interview, it is reasonable to follow up with the recruiter.

What kinds of roles does Imperial Oil hire most actively?

On a sustained basis: process engineers, mechanical and reliability engineers, instrumentation and electrical engineers, chemical engineers (refining and petrochemicals), reservoir and production engineers, geoscientists (geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists), data scientists and machine learning engineers, control systems engineers, project managers, environmental specialists, Power Engineers (1st through 4th Class for Cold Lake and Kearl), industrial mechanics and millwrights, instrumentation technicians, heavy duty mechanics, IT roles (cybersecurity, SAP, infrastructure, data engineering), commercial roles (trading, supply, scheduling, marketing), finance and accounting (CPA-track), legal counsel, public and government affairs, HR and talent acquisition, and Health Safety Security & Environment specialists.

What is the Strathcona Renewable Diesel Facility and how does it affect hiring?

The Strathcona Renewable Diesel Facility, co-located with Imperial's existing Strathcona refinery in Edmonton, began first production in 2025 and is the largest renewable diesel plant in Canada at approximately 20,000 barrels per day. It uses low-carbon-intensity feedstocks (vegetable oils, used cooking oil, animal fats) and blue hydrogen produced with carbon capture. From a hiring perspective, the project added a meaningful step-up in process engineering, operations, supply chain, and commercial roles tied to renewable feedstocks and the carbon credit / Clean Fuel Regulations market. Imperial continues to recruit for these roles and the facility is expected to be a long-term operational asset.

Is Imperial Oil a good employer for early-career engineers and new graduates?

Yes, with caveats. Imperial runs structured intern, co-op, and graduate engineer programs that are well-regarded among Canadian engineering schools (University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Toronto, Queen's, McMaster, McGill, Waterloo, UBC, Dalhousie). Early-career engineers get rotational assignments through multiple disciplines or sites in their first three to five years, structured mentorship from senior P.Engs, and clear progression milestones tied to professional registration (EIT to P.Eng.). The caveats: Imperial is a process-driven, large-organization environment, not a startup — early-career engineers who want immediate ownership of broad scope may find the structure constraining. The trade-off is depth, training, and a credential on your resume that opens doors anywhere in global energy.

How to Apply to Imperial Oil

Key Takeaways

About Imperial Oil

Application Process

Resume Tips for Imperial Oil

Lead with measured outcomes, not responsibilities

Use Canadian English spelling and Canadian conventions throughout

Surface oil sands or heavy oil experience explicitly if you have it

Mirror the requisition language carefully

For operations and maintenance roles, lead with safety credentials

Address rotational work history and remote-camp tolerance directly if applying f

If you are an Indigenous candidate, self-identify in the SuccessFactors voluntar

Keep the resume to two pages for early-career and three pages maximum for senior

Include a one or two sentence professional summary at the top that names the dis

For new graduates and interns, lead with the institution, degree, GPA (if 3

ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting (shared ExxonMobil/Imperial instance)

Interview Culture

What Imperial Oil Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources