2017 European Data Science Salary Survey

Salary Change

AN ALTERNATIVE METRIC TO CURRENT SALARY is the amount that one’s salary changed in the last three years. Most respondents’ salaries grew at least a little in the last three years, and about a third of the sample saw their wages rise by 50% or more over this period. This latter group tended to be less experienced, with an average of 4.4 years of experience (compared to 7.6 years among those whose salaries did not grow by 50% or more).

For Spark/Hadoop and Python-only users, we use the tool-defined groups from page 8. They were most likely to have had 50% or more wage growth (40% and 44% of them did, respectively). Respondents who did not use Hadoop, Python, or R (the “SQL/Excel” group) were the least likely: only 19% of them reported a 50% rise in their salaries.

A final question asked respondents about the next step they would like to take in their career. The top response was “learn new technology/skills” and respondents who gave this answer tended to be less experienced (5.5 years on average) and have smaller salaries (€40K median) than the rest of the sample.

Respondents who said they would like to move into leadership roles had salaries far above average (€65K median). The other top responses were “work on more interesting/important projects,” “switch companies,” and “start your own company”. Respondents who work in the healthcare industry were far more likely to choose “switch companies” (33%) than respondents from other industries (11%).

Note

Most respondents’ ...