Big banks and tech firms are fighting each other in the effort to hire more data scientists. The result is higher average pay for data scientists, even for those fresh out of graduate school. The average Facebook data scientist brings home close to $200,000 annually while PhD-level candidates now are looking at base salaries above $150,000.
Last May, the average compensation for data scientists in the United States was $120,000. Now, just a few months later, it is $140,000.
Beecher Tuttle reports on the scramble to hire more data scientists for efinancialcareers:
It doesn’t help that everyone who is anyone wants a data scientist now. Uber, Airbnb, Homeaway, Google and Facebook to name but a few are all hiring in Silicon Valley, with many line managers bypassing HR and trying to reach candidates directly.
Data scientists in banks are doing the same. In July, a VP-level data scientist at Goldman Sachs published a “We Are Hiring!” post on LinkedIn and told anyone who was interested to reach out to him directly, rather than applying to the actual job posting for surveillance analytics engineers (a posting that is still active today).“You’d never see this style [of recruiting at investment banks] just a few years ago,” said one New York headhunter who banks pay to do retained searches for senior tech talent. “Hiring managers have bypassed human resources forever, but it was never so brazen,” she said. “But I don’t blame them whatsoever, and I don’t think HR minds the help.” She noted that the big data community has enough options that they typically rely on referrals and networking to find the best opportunities, even with recent graduates.
To get a window into the current level of talent poaching, eight of the top 20 data scientists in finance whom we identified in March of last year have left for other roles.
