As far back as 2012, the Harvard Business Review said that data scientists will have “The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.” Seven years later, the demand for data scientists and the related fields of data engineering and machine learning is still exploding.
A 2018 Burtch Works study reveals that midlevel data scientists now are paid a median salary of $128,750. Manager-level data scientists can expect a median salary of $250,000.
Joshua Fruhlinger filed this report in Thinknum:
We looked at job listings for more than 5,000 companies since 2016 to gain an understanding of how demand for data science professionals has grown. Demand for data scientists has been on a steady upslope, with more than 3,200 openings as of this month.
As far as who is hiring data scientists, the top-20 companies read a lot like the world’s most-successful businesses. It includes such players as Amazon, Booz Allen Hamilton, Walmart, and Apple. The aforementioned IBM study found that 59% of all data science jobs are in Finance and Insurance, Professional Services, and IT, but as you can see by the top-20 list below, demand is diversifying. In short, everyone needs data scientists.
The job is relevant for virtually all sectors of business that deal in data and, let’s be frank, that means any successful 21st-Century business that is doing anything with big data. Data scientists discover trends that can alter the future trajectory of a company; they help decision makers gather and gain insights based on the past. In short, they’re the future of business decision-making, and they’re desperately in demand.
