4 Reasons Why Machine Learning Engineers Earn More Than Data Scientists

It pays (well) to be a Jack Of All Trades

A few years ago, Data Scientist was crowned “The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century” [1] and only recently, people have started to question whether it still is and will continue to be the sexist, given the rise of other data-related roles like Machine Learning (ML) Engineers, Big Data Architects, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineers and more. Now don’t get me wrong — sexy or not — has nothing to do with how much Data Scientists should be paid.

Screen captured from [2]

But more specifically, we have seen ML Engineer salaries outpace that of Data Scientists, and in my opinion, rightfully so.

Short Disclaimer

Views expressed here are my own and you may choose to disagree with them. This article makes the broad generalization that with all other factors held constant (tenure, experience, job scope, company, geography, etc), ML Engineers tend to be paid more than Data Scientists. Also, this article aims to debunk the underlying reasons for salary differences and does NOT claim any job to be superior over the other.

Now with that out of the way, let’s jump into it.

Here’s why I think ML Engineers are paid more than Data…