Brian Suda&King John - 2017 European data science salary survey

As data analysts and engineersas professionals who like nothing better than petabytes of rich datawe find ourselves in a strange spot: we know very little about ourselves. But thats changing. This salary and tools survey is the fifth in an annual series. To keep the insights flowing, we need one thing: PEOPLE LIKE YOU TO TAKE THE SURVEY.

Anonymous and secure, the survey will continue to provide insight into the demographics, work environments, tools, and compensation of practitioners in our field. We hope youll consider it a civic service and participate today.

HERE WE TAKE A DEEP DIVE INTO THE RESULTS FROM RESPONDENTS, EXPLORING CAREER DETAILS AND FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE SALARY

YOU CAN PRESS ACTUAL BUTTONS (and earn our sincere gratitude) by taking the 2018 surveyit only takes about 5 to 10 minutes, and is essential for us to continue to provide this kind of research. oreilly.com/ideas/take-the-data-science-salary-survey

IN THIS FIFTH EDITION OF the OReilly Data Science Salary Survey, we analyze input from nearly 800 participants from 69 countries, 42 US states, and Washington, DC. We explore everything from salaries and bonuses to tools, cloud providers, and reporting. We also investigate how interpersonal skills aka soft skillsmight be affecting salaries.

Key findings include the following:

• We tie the drop in share of US respondents to a rise in international companies starting and growing their data organizations.

• Those who self-assess as having the best bargaining skills make substantially more than others.

• The larger the company, the higher the salary.

• Python usage is up: 63% from last years 58%.

• Although two-thirds of respondents use Windows to accomplish at least some of their work, thats down from 74% last year.

• Spark and Spark MLlib are gaining in popularity, and worth keeping an eye on.

• Global median salary is $90,000 (USD).

With five years of data, our results are consistent enough to reliably identify change and trends. When we see an increase in, for example, the popularity of a programming language, we can recognize a real change in the data ecosystem, and one to which its worth paying attention. There are a few surprises this year, but most of the data is consistent with past results.

Chapter 2. Introduction

THIS IS THE FIFTH YEAR for the Data Science Salary Survey, and we certainly see some trends over that time. With nearly 800 participants taking this online, self-reported survey, we can use this data to get a better picture of what tools data scientists are using, where the industry is heading, and most important, get an overview of salaries for the data community. The respondents came from 69 countries and 42 US states. This gives us a good geographic dispersion when we look at the trends.

The survey asked specific questions about salary, industry, team, and company size, but it also asked questions such as, How easy is it to move to another position? or What is your next career step? When all of these questions are put together, a better picture of the overall landscape comes into focus when looking at data in various industries.

The data and model are best used to start a larger discussion about, for instance, how you compare to your peers and the industry as a whole, and the soft and hard skills you might think about acquiring in order to stay competitive and up-to-date.

In the horizontal bar charts throughout this report, we include the interquartile range (IQR) to show the middle 50% of respondents answers to questions such as salary. One quarter of the respondents have a salary below the displayed range, and one quarter have a salary above the displayed range.

The IQRs are represented by colored, horizontal bars. On each of these colored bars, the white vertical band represents the median value.

Chapter 3. Salary

THE DISTRIBUTION OF SALARIES SKEWS TO THE RIGHT; that is, compared to a symmetric distribution, there are more people making extreme amounts on the high end of the scale. To compensate for that skew, we use median income as the best overall salary measure. For the 2017 survey, we find a median of $90,000, which is up $5,000 compared to last years median income of $85,000.

By World Region

It is no surprise that the US has the highest median salaries of any region, coming in at $112,000 (up 6.7% over last year), with 57% of respondents. That salary is nearly double that of the Western European average of $57,000. This phenomenon might be due to several factors; for instance, the value of the UK pound has nosedived compared to the dollar this year, the value of the Euro has also declined, and some respondents might report their salary in local currency rather than converting to US dollars.

Australia and New Zealand have a healthy data culture; the two countries are second highest in pay, with a $100,000 median salary. Eastern Europe shows the lowest median salary, $27,000, but only 5.8% respondents.

Note

Australia and New Zealand have a healthy data culture; the two countries are second highest in pay, with a $100,000 median salary