Data Scientist salary
What a data scientist actually earns, from 848 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-09-06.
Switch the market above to see data scientist pay in the 5 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Data science pay clusters more tightly than most technical roles, which tells you the market has settled on what the job is. The middle half of US postings runs from about 127,000 to 175,000 dollars, with a median near 147,000 and an official OEWS median of 112,590. That is a narrow band by tech standards, and the narrowness is a sign of maturity: the wild premiums of the mid-2010s have compressed as the supply of trained data scientists caught up. What is moving now is the boundary with machine-learning engineering. The AI wave has pulled the top of the band upward for people who can put models into production, not just prototype them, which is the exact skill that separates the two occupations and the reason the data-scientist-to-ML -engineer move is worth pricing. If your pay has plateaued in the middle of this band, that boundary is usually where the next raise lives.
Open data scientist roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
Data Scientist Pleno (Crédito) at AsaasBrazil · RemoteTodayApply
Data Scientist – Practice IA chez MARGO | Projets Marketing & Optimisation at MARGOParisTodayApply
Data Scientist - Remote at Mutual Of OmahaUnited States · Remote$99k–$130kTodayApply
Data Scientist, Completions Analytics at CorvaArgentina · Remote1d agoApply
Data Scientist – GCP at Factor ITChile1d agoApply
Senior Data Scientist (m/f/d) at Autoscout24Germany1d agoApply
By seniority
Posted-median pay by seniority signal in the title, from our corpus. Noisy at the edges where sample sizes are small.
By country
- United States$123,855$152,167$193,520
- United Kingdom$73,325$86,831$111,719
- Canada$77,983$95,900$127,855
- France$49,347$53,727$62,487
- India$15,268$21,400$28,708
Switzerland · official wage bands
median CHF 8'730/month
Swiss postings do not state pay, so these are not posted salaries: they are the federal wage survey (Lohnstrukturerhebung 2024) for the ISCO group 21 Naturwissenschaftler, Mathematiker und Ingenieure: standardized gross monthly, full-time, 13th salary included pro rata. The band covers the whole occupation group, which is coarser than this occupation alone.
Annual ≈ CHF 104'760 at the median. Source: Bundesamt für Statistik, LSE 2024.
Top-paying US states
OEWS median by state, highest first.
- California$174,211
- Washington$158,760
- New York$158,036
- District of Columbia$137,120
- Massachusetts$132,250
- Virginia$126,070
Roles that pay more, that these skills already reach
Median pay from each destination’s own postings, with the readiness a data scientist profile already covers.
- 294 open machine learning engineer roles$172,210 median · +$20,043 · 53% readiness
- 578 open research scientist roles$154,306 median · +$2,139 · 55% readiness
Every measured move out of this role, ranked by readiness: alternative careers for a data scientist.
Is your offer fair?
Run a specific number through FairElephant, which weighs it against this data, your location, and remote market rates.
Move into or out of data scientist
- data scientist → machine learning engineermeasured route
- data analyst → data engineermeasured route
Related salaries
- Software Engineer salary$185,617 median
- UX Designer salary$115,577 median
- Product Manager salary$171,066 median
Quick answers
How much do data scientists make?
The live-posting US median is about 147,000 dollars, with a typical range of 127,000 to 175,000. The official BLS OEWS median is 112,590.
Is data science still a high-paying career in 2026?
Yes, though the band has compressed as supply caught up. The upside now concentrates in machine-learning and production skills rather than analysis alone.
Do data scientists or ML engineers earn more?
They overlap, with ML engineering edging higher at the top for production and LLM-serving skills. See the data-scientist-to-ML-engineer route for the gap.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 15-2051. Unemployment is the 2025 BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) CPS (Current Population Survey) annual-average rate for “Other mathematical science occupations.” Live corpus 848 observations, 2026-09-06. Definitions in the glossary.