Salaries of Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers From Around the World

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Annual salaries for data scientists and machine learning engineers vary significantly across the world. Based on a 2017 Kaggle survey of data professionals, countries with the highest paid data scientists and machine learning engineers (in USD) were: US ($120K), Australia ($111K), Israel ($88K), Canada ($81K) and Germany ($80K). Countries with the lowest annual salaries were: Brazil ($35K), Poland ($29K), Ukraine ($25K), India ($14K) and Russia ($13K).

In my last post, I compared at annual salaries of different data professionals in the US. Data scientists and machine learning engineers from the US reported some of the highest salaries among different data professionals. These results were based on the results of a survey of over 16,000 data professionals conducted by Kaggle that was conducted in August of 2017. In today’s post, I’ll extend those findings by looking at the salary/compensation of two job roles, data scientists and machine learning engineers, from different countries. While the Kaggle study included many other job titles, I looked (and combined) these two roles as they were similar in both their job skills and salary levels in the US.

Annual Salaries for Data Professionals in the US

Survey respondents were asked,”What is your current total yearly compensation (salary + bonus)?” The results of that question for selected countries (sample size of 20 or greater) appear in Figure 1. After converting salaries to US dollars, the average median compensation for data professionals varied across countries, with a low of $13K for Russia and a high of $120K for the US.

Figure 1. Median Salaries for Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers from Across the World

The countries with the highest annual salaries for data scientists and machine learning engineers included:

1. United States ($120K)
2. Australia ($111K)
3. Israel ($88K)
4. Canada ($81K)
5. Germany ($80K)
6. Netherlands ($75K)
7. Japan ($70K)
8. United Kingdom ($66K)
9. Italy ($60K)
10. France ($55K)

Changes in Compensation in the Past 3 Years

Respondents were also asked, “How has your salary / compensation changed in the past 3 years?” On average, salaries and compensation increased over the past three years for data scientists and machine learning engineers. While about 18% of these respondents said their compensation had not changed more than 5% over the previous three years, about 45% of these respondents indicated their salary / compensation has increased 20% or more and 19% of these respondents indicated their salary / compensation has increased between 6% and 19%. Only 3% of respondents indicated their compensation decreased over the past three years. Fourteen percent said they were not employed three years ago.

Figure 2. Changes in Salary / Compensation for Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers Varied over Countries.

Changes in salary/compensation for data scientists and machine learning engineers varied over country (see Figure 2). The top 10 countries with the greatest increase in salary / compensation (percent of data professionals who reported a salary increase of 6% or more) for these specific data professionals over the past three years included:

1. Poland (78%)
2. Israel (77%%)
3. Australia (74%%)
4. Brazil (74%%)
5. United States (72%)
6. South Africa (70%)
7. India (68%)
8. Germany (66%)
9. Russia (66%)
10. Ukraine (65%)

Summary

The current analysis found that annual salaries for data scientists and machine learning engineers varied over countries, with the highest annual salaries seen in the US, Australia, Israel and Canada and the lowest seen in Poland, Ukraine, India and Russia.

While the annual salary of these specific data professionals significantly varied over countries, I found that job satisfaction was not related to annual salaries across the countries reported here (r = -.04). So, while some countries may have low annual salaries, that does not necessarily mean that their data scientists and machine learning engineers report low job satisfaction compared to countries with higher annual salaries. For example, even though data scientists and machine learning engineers from Russia had the lowest annual salaries, they reported the highest level of job satisfaction.

Data scientists and machine learning engineers from Poland, Israel Australia and Brazil reported the biggest increase in their annual salary / compensation over the previous three years (over 70% of them reported a 6%+ increase in their compensation over the past three years).  The adoption of Big Data analytics and AI in organizations continues to grow. As is seen in the current analysis, this growth is matched by the growth in the salaries of data scientists and machine learning engineers worldwide.