Data Scientist vs Solutions Architect

Measured from each occupation's own live postings: mostly different jobs wearing similar names. Posted pay favors the solutions architect by about $12k at the midpoint. Everything on this page is read from the two occupations’ own live postings and refreshed every night.

The short answer

$76k–$160kData Scientist
+$12kSolutions Architect, at the midpoint
$90k–$170kSolutions Architect

On pay, solutions architects come out ahead by about $12k a year at the midpoint of posted bands: $90k–$170k against $76k–$160k for data scientists. These are advertised figures from postings that state a salary, not estimates.

On skills, they are mostly different jobs that happen to share a name or a hallway. The overlap is thin, which is often exactly why people search this pair. The readiness numbers further down say how far a typical profile on each side already reaches into the other, and which direction is the easier move.

Data Scientist

Posted pay, middle half$76k–$160k
FieldTechnology
Postings read3,150
Open right now530 (165 remote)

Solutions Architect

Posted pay, middle half$90k–$170k
FieldTechnology
Postings read5,837
Open right now600 (151 remote)

Switching, both directions

Data ScientistSolutions Architect

Not scored: the two sets of postings share too few skills in this direction for an honest number. Run the instrument with your own skill set for a personal read.

Solutions ArchitectData Scientist

28% skill readiness

What data scientist postings ask for that solutions architect profiles usually lack: Machine Learning, Statistics, A/B Testing, Deep Learning.

Run this direction on the instrument

Open data scientist roles right now

The freshest data scientist openings on the board, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.

See all 530 data scientist jobs

Open solutions architect roles right now

The freshest solutions architect openings on the board. Same rules: live, tagged to the occupation, linking to the original posting.

See all 600 solutions architect jobs

See the whole board for both

1,130 live roles across the two, freshest first, with posted pay and remote flags where the posting states them.

Related comparisons

Which one do your skills favor?

Run the instrument with your own skill set and both readiness numbers recompute for you. Free, no account.

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Quick answers

Which pays more, data scientist or solutions architect?

On pay, solutions architects come out ahead by about $12k a year at the midpoint of posted bands: $90k–$170k against $76k–$160k for data scientists. These are advertised figures from postings that state a salary, not estimates. By seniority and country: data scientist salary and solutions architect salary.

Are data scientist and solutions architect the same job?

On skills, they are mostly different jobs that happen to share a name or a hallway. The overlap is thin, which is often exactly why people search this pair.

Can a solutions architect become a data scientist?

Going the other way, a typical solutions architect profile covers 28% of what data scientist postings ask for.

How many data scientist and solutions architect jobs are open right now?

Right now our board has 530 data scientist openings and 600 solutions architect openings, each linking to the original posting. The board refreshes every night, so the counts move with the market. Hiring the most data scientists at the moment: OpenAI (9), Pinterest (9), Reddit (8). For solutions architects: Amazon (21), Databricks (15), ServiceNow (11).

Method: each occupation’s salary band is the posted 25th to 75th percentile from its own corpus, counting only postings that state pay; 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. Job lists and counts are the live board. Refreshed with the nightly scrape.

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