neutrino7

Ok, so Texas is technically in the South... you got me.

I suppose I should have clarified: major southeastern cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, D.C., Nashville, Miami)

I’m not sure. At average companies, I think SWEs and data scientists make about the same. But the top companies have a much larger software engineering population to choose from, so they can afford to be picky, and the pay correspondingly reflects that. There’s about 20x as many software engineers as there are data scientists in the world.

I think this is changing though, and I think “data scientist” will soon be split into sub-roles. Some companies like Lyft have already changed their title scheme. Business analysts are now data scientists, and those who were data scientists are now research scientists.

The company I work for has an internal job role that isn’t public and an external title that is. So a “data scientist” may have an internal role of “business analyst” or an internal role of “applied scientist”, and there’s a big difference in pay despite the same outward-facing title.

I think the pay scale goes:

Data scientist (business analyst) < data scientist (non-CS PhD) < software engineer = core data scientist (CS PhD) < AI researcher (ML PhD + great publications)

I have a non-CS PhD so I think that’s why I don’t make as much as a software engineer or a core data scientist.

Base salary and bonus is generally the same for all roles for a given experience level; the difference in comp. comes from the RSUs granted.

> But the Big5 have tons of locations

Name one Big5 job in the entire U.S. south. Or at least one that pays as well as them.

There aren’t any.

I just started a job as a data scientist at a FAANG company. PhD + 2 years of experience for $200k total compensation (plus another $50k in one time bonuses/relo). It’s almost double what my previous (non-tech) employer paid. Although I’m starting to wonder if I should have gone the software engineering route instead. SWEs get double the RSUs as data scientists for the same experience level (so ~250k for my level) and they also didn’t spend 4 years working on a PhD to get there. Oh well... I can’t complain. Very happy with my current situation.