The Best Jobs Are in Tech, Especially in Analytics and Data Management
It's a good time to be a data scientist. In all, four data management-related jobs cracked the top 10 of a new job satisfaction survey from Glassdoor.com.
It's a good time to be a data scientist. The same goes for data engineers, analytics managers, and database administrators (DBAs). All four data management-related jobs cracked the top 10 of a new job satisfaction survey from employment and recruiting website Glassdoor.com.
For the second year in a row, data scientists topped Glassdoor's "The 50 Best Jobs in America" survey. This year, data scientists earn a median base salary of $110,000 and boast a job satisfaction rating of 4.4 out of 5. Data engineers, #3 in Glassdoor's survey, were in hot pursuit with a median base salary of $106,000 and a job satisfaction rating of 4.3 out of 5. [Editor's note: a list of their current data scientist positions is available here.]
Both jobs are part of a tech onslaught on Glassdoor's annual survey.
"[F]or tech jobs, companies across all industries are ... struggling to fill jobs [such as] data scientists, software engineers, and mobile developers," said Glassdoor chief economist Dr. Andrew Chamberlain in a statement. These jobs have something else in common, too: they cannot easily be automated.
This is no coincidence, according to Chamberlain: "[T]he best jobs are highly skilled and are staying ahead of the growing trend toward workplace automation. Nearly half the list is comprised of jobs within the fast-growing technology, healthcare, and finance industries."
Tech Is Dominant
Glassdoor's "The 50 Best Jobs in America" survey is certainly tech-heavy, especially in its upper echelons.
Analytics manager -- a role that requires deep technical and business domain-specific expertise -- was #5, with a median base salary of $112,000 and a satisfaction rating of 4.1 out of 5. Note that analytics managers earn more, on average, than data scientists or data engineers.
In fact, analytics manager and solutions architect (#10, with a $125,000 median base salary and a satisfaction rating of 3.7) were the two highest-paid technical positions on the list. DBAs, for their part, clocked in at #7 with a median base salary of $97,000 and a satisfaction rating of 3.8.
As of January 24, 2017, Glassdoor shows nearly 34,000 job postings for data scientists, more than 187,000 for data engineers, and more than 194,000 for analytics managers. Surprisingly, Glassdoor shows fewer job listings for DBAs (almost 146,000) than for data engineers or analytics managers.
Several other technical roles also cracked the top 10. Devops engineer appeared at #2 (median base salary of $110,000), with user experience (UX) designer at #9 (median base salary of $92,500).
That means technical roles accounted for seven out of the top ten jobs. Other tech jobs of note include software engineer at #16 (median base salary of $101,000) and business intelligence (BI) developer at #47.
BI developers earn a lower median base salary ($83,000) than other data management-related job roles. However, with a job satisfaction rating of 3.9 out of 5, BI developers are more satisfied with their jobs on average than, for example, software engineers (3.5 out of 5) or DBAs. Glassdoor shows about 61,000 BI developer job openings nationally.