Data Positions Salary Analysis: Deciphering the Mysteries of Job and Compensation
In the Data Job Market, roles such as Data Analyst (DA), Data Engineer (DE), Data Scientist (DS), and Algorithm Engineer (AE) not only require mastery in Data Projects and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) skills, but also, when tasks involve report generation, business analysis, or visualization, these positions often necessitate DE (Data Engineering) and ML (Machine Learning) expertise.
The trend towards the generalization of these skills not only reflects the pulse of industry development but might also reveal issues of mismatch between job titles and responsibilities.
I am particularly curious about the relationship between job titles, responsibilities, and salaries: Does the same job content result in different salaries due to different job titles?
Exploring the Salary Across Various Job Features
Over 2,000 job positions I collected from Taiwan, although not all jobs disclosed their salary (as per local laws, positions with a monthly salary above NT$40,000 can withhold salary information), we can still analyze based on the data available (n = 618).
Among these four types of jobs, the AE position had the highest median minimum salary (NT$50,000), while DA had the lowest (NT$38,000).
The difference in company locations did not significantly affect salaries.The salary range varied across industries, with the ICT industry having the highest median minimum salary (NT$45,000), while manufacturing and service retail were relatively lower.
Managerial positions usually had higher salaries than non-managerial ones. PhD holders definitely earned more than those with a master’s degree or lower. Jobs requiring at least 1–2 years of experience had similar salaries to those with no experience requirements, but positions demanding 3–4 years or more experience had significantly higher median salaries.
Jobs involving CV/DL, AI/ML responsibilities tended to have higher median salaries, except for AD/GA which was relatively lower. Interestingly, among AI/ML-related responsibilities, positions requiring NLP and NER Tool Development had unusually low median minimum salaries.
In jobs involving AD/GA responsibilities, those requiring “Assigned tasks by supervisors” also showed lower median salaries. For positions involving DB/SQL, those requiring “Database Performance Monitoring” had lower median minimum salaries as well.
Conclusion: A Multifaceted View of the Salary Puzzle
In the data we have collected so far, we indeed observe a correlation between certain job titles and job contents with lower salaries, particularly for the Data Analyst position.
However, inferring from this that Data Analyst roles generally offer lower salaries may not be entirely accurate. On one hand, we have excluded jobs that did not disclose their salary range, potentially causing a selection bias. For instance, the position of high-level Data Analysts might choose not to disclose their salaries.
On the other hand, even with the same job title, different companies may have different definitions of responsibilities. Positions like DE/DS/D/AE inherently demand higher experience or educational qualifications, thus higher salaries are justified.
I know that we are all concerned about salaries, and I am no exception; but remember, data is just data. As you know, with the current information, we might still be debating correlations without knowing the true causes.
I hope you find joy in continuously exploring data and understanding the stories behind it. The value of this joy cannot be measured by any price tag attached to us.
Since we are all partners dealing with data, let’s continue to explore and discover the dynamics and trends of the job market in our own unique ways.
