Actuary vs Data Scientist
Measured from each occupation's own live postings: mostly different jobs wearing similar names. Posted pay is close to a wash. Salary bands, both switching directions, and the shared skills below, every number from live postings, refreshed nightly.
Actuary
Data Scientist
518 open roles · data scientist salary · careers for data scientists
Switching, both directions
The asymmetry is the finding: data scientist → actuary reads 34% ready; the reverse only 14%. Skill overlap is not symmetric, and the direction you travel matters.
Actuary → Data Scientist
The gap, from data scientist postings: Machine Learning, LLMs / Generative AI, ETL, A/B Testing.
Data Scientist → Actuary
The gap, from actuary postings: Financial Modeling, Underwriting, Risk Management, Accounting.
Related comparisons
- Data Scientist vs Machine Learning Engineer70% peak overlap
- Data Analyst vs Data Scientist61% peak overlap
- Data Scientist vs Product Analyst57% peak overlap
- Actuary vs Underwriter55% peak overlap
- Data Scientist vs Research Scientist55% peak overlap
- Actuary vs Financial Analyst50% peak overlap
Which one do your skills favor?
Run the instrument with your own skill set and both readiness numbers recompute for you. Free, no account.
Quick answers
Which pays more, actuary or data scientist?
Data Scientist, by about $2k a year at the midpoint. Going by postings that state pay, the posted middle band for an actuary runs $78k–$154k, and for a data scientist it runs $76k–$160k. We only count postings that state a salary, so these are advertised figures rather than estimates.
Are actuary and data scientist the same job?
No. Despite the similar names, their postings ask for mostly different skills.
Can an actuary become a data scientist?
Yes, and a typical actuary profile already covers 14% of what data scientist postings ask for. The route page lists the exact skills that make up the gap.
Can a data scientist become an actuary?
In this direction a typical data scientist profile covers 34% of what actuary postings ask for. It is worth noticing that the two directions are not symmetric: data scientist to actuary is the easier move (34% against 14%).
Method: each occupation’s salary band is the posted 25th–75th percentile from its own corpus; readiness is coverage of the destination’s posting-skill weight; shared skills are read from the overlap waterfall. Pairs sharing too few skills are not scored in that direction. Refreshed with the nightly scrape.