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What is a Data Scientist’s Salary in India?

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Are you also inspired by the career opportunities provided by Data Science & a typically high Data Scientist salary in India? 

Great!

Before we get to Data Scientist salary in India, let’s understand the domain of data science.

This will give you an understanding of why the salary of a Data Scientist in India is high. Data science is a field that uses technology, processes, and systems to derive meaningful insights from structured and unstructured data.

To give you a sense of how important data science is today, consider the following statistic in DOMO’s 6th edition report:

Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, and it’s only going to grow from there. By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth.

Now, of course, this is a worldwide statistic, but you can imagine how much data one company generates in a day. But how does an organization use this data? How do they arrive at conclusions to make decisions based off of it? That is where data science comes in.

Data science enables companies to analyze their data and extract ‘information’ out of it. This information can be used to make decisions, understand past events, and predict future incidents. Data science unifies statistics, data analysis, and Machine Learning to provide insights from raw data.

Data science landscape
Data science landscape source – towards data science

History of Data Science

Although the term ‘Data Science’ was coined long ago, the concept as we know and use it today was established fairly recently. With the advancement of technology into fields like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Data Mining and Analytics have become a part of everyday business.

Examples of the Modern Use of Data Science

1. Video application Netflix uses data mining to collate user viewing data, and data science to analyze it and use it to show accurate recommendations and also for future shows.

2. Retail giant Target uses data science to collect consumer interest and activity data in order to understand shopping behavior better. They use this data to personalize recommendations based on the consumer.

3. American multinational consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble Company uses data science (time series model) to predict future demand in order to align production with demand.

How Data Mining and Analysis Works

 

The data science workflow
The data science workflow source – data quest

In order to know why the salary of a Data Scientist in India is high, you need to understand the processes involved in data science. The first step in data science is data exploration. Data extraction can be done through machine learning-enabled programs or sometimes even manually by a Data Scientist.

A Data Scientist then analyses (again with a combination of ML programs and manual work) this data to look for patterns within this data. Analytics tools are used to get statistics and insights, and a lot of analytical knowledge and expertise are required by the Data Scientist.

Data Scientists then uses these insights to perform actions: segmentation analysis, time series forecasting, synthetic control experiments, etc. The Data Scientist guides important stakeholders as to what needs to be done, based on the inferences made from extracted data.

The importance of data management and analysis in today’s business world is what drives the increase in Data Scientists’ salaries.

What is a Data Scientist’s Job?

An IT Data Scientist is responsible firstly for ‘data mining’, which is the extraction of complex data through various mining programs.

They are also responsible for providing ideas and incorporating newer, better ways to mine more volumes of accurate data, faster. They achieve this by managing statistical data and creating models based on company requirements. 

Data Scientists are also responsible for the accurate analysis of this mined data. They use analytical tools for insights and also analyze through experience and knowledge to infer and provide actionable steps.

Data scientists need to ensure all data mining work is performed within approved guidelines and legalities of the region they are ming data from. They are required to work in collaboration with teams, using market basket analysis, k-nearest neighbors, collaborative filtering, and matrix factorization methods.

With today’s technology advancement, Data Scientists have powerful systems and cutting edge solutions at their disposal for easy and quick data extraction and for accurate analytics and insights.

IT Tasks of a Data Scientist

(i) Design and develop new modeling, data mining, and production data set processes.

(ii) Find, design and deploy data, search quality, and predictive analytics improvement techniques.

(iii) Analyze data to provide actionable steps.

(iv) Create proof of concepts, prototypes, predictive models, algorithms, and custom analysis models.

Data Scientist Salary in India

According to PayScale, the average salary of a Data Scientist in India is Rs 7,08,012 per annum, and according to Glassdoor, the average salary of a Data Scientist in India is Rs 10,24,000 per annum. This puts the average salary of a Data Scientist in India at around Rs 8.5L per annum.

Bear in mind, this is the average Data Scientist salary after taking into consideration numerous companies and more importantly, job positions and responsibilities. The PayScale report places the Data Scientist salary in India to range between Rs 3.4L per annum for absolute beginners, to Rs 20L per annum and higher for experienced high-level professionals. 

Here is the recorded average salary of a Data Scientist in India by skill:

(i) Machine Learning Engineer: ₹8,60,712

(ii) Data Analyst: ₹7,14,045

(iii) R Programmer: ₹7,16,755

(iv) Big Data Analytics Engineer: ₹7,90,911

(v) Python Programmer: ₹7,99,703

Following is a graph depicting the average salary of a Data Scientist in India by experience level:

Average salary of a data scientist in india
Average salary of a data scientist in india source – payscale

Following is the average salary of a Data Scientist in India by role:

(i) Software Engineer: ₹2.5L – ₹10L

(ii) Data Analyst: ₹1.97L – ₹9.12L

(iii) Senior Software Engineer: ₹4.64L – ₹20L

(iv) Data Scientist: ₹3.37L – ₹20L

(v) Software Developer: ₹2.06L – ₹10L

(vi) Sr. Software Engineer / Developer / Programmer: ₹4.13L – ₹20L

(vii) Senior Business Analyst: ₹4.29L – ₹20L

(viii) Business Analyst, IT: ₹2.86L – ₹10L

(ix) Senior Data Analyst: ₹3.10L – ₹10L

(x) Software Engineer / Developer / Programmer: ₹2.32L – ₹10L

You can get a sense of Data Scientist salary in India by region by this Glassdoor report:

(i) Data scientist salary in Bengaluru for 5-7 year experience: ₹25,00,000 per year

(ii) Data scientist salary in New Delhi Area: ₹15,50,000 per year

Data Scientists Jobs in India

The Data Scientist salary in India is high because of the demand for Data Scientists today. We spoke earlier about the amount of data being generated in the world every day.

This has made analytics roles extremely crucial for businesses to grow and improve. To give you a sense of what cities in India and what companies are currently hiring, and the designation they are hiring for, we have prepared the following table of recent openings in India:

Company

Role

Location

Flipkart

Data Scientist

Bangalore

Accenture

Data Science (Jupyter/Azure ML/MatLab)

Mumbai

Amazon

Senior Data Scientist

Bangalore

CareerXperts Consulting

AI / ML Data Scientist

Chennai

GE

Data Scientist

Bangalore

Vodafone Idea

Senior Data Scientist

Mumbai

Merck

Data Analyst / Data Scientist

Bangalore

Microsoft

Senior Data Scientist

Hyderabad

Hora.AI

Head of Data Science

Gurugram

It’s quite evident that companies in the top IT hubs in India: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, etc. are actively looking for Data Scientists. You can also see that companies that are hiring by paying a high Data Scientist salary in India are top tier: Microsoft, Amazon, GE, Flipkart, etc. 

How to Become a Data Scientist?

Now that you have an idea about the demand for Data Scientists, and the average Data Scientist salary in India, we want to give you a detailed understanding of how you can become a Data Scientist.

How to become a data scientist
How to become a data scientist source – towards data science

A quick summary of the most important skills needed for a good Data Scientist salary in India:

(a) Programming Languages: Python, R, SAS

(b) Machine Learning Tools

(c) Data Visualization and Reporting

(d) Risk Analysis

(e) Statistics and Math

(f) Effective Communication

(g) Software Engineering Skills

(h) Data Mining, Cleaning, and Munging

(i) Big Data Platforms

(j) Cloud Tools

1. Education

A Data Scientist’s job requires a lot of analytical skills, which is why having a minimum of a bachelor’s degree is considered a must for Data Scientist prospects. According to KD nuggets, 88% of Data Scientists that were interviewed had at least a Master’s degree, and 46% had a Ph.D.

They also state that earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science, social science, physical sciences, or statistics is ideal (but not compulsory) if you’re interested in becoming a Data Scientist.

According to their research, the current most common fields of study Data Scientists come from are Mathematics and Statistics (32%), Computer Science (19%) and Engineering (16%).

2. Programming

Knowing one or preferrable more programming languages is a must if you’re interested in becoming a Data Scientist. Data scientists need to work on building data extraction and analysis models which are programs built on modern programming languages.

Most preferred and popular programming languages in data science are Python (Interested in Python? 

3. Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Knowledge

Data Scientists who know ML and AI, and are able to implement it, are more preferred in today’s industry. If you compare Data Scientist salary in India, Data Scientists who have knowledge on concepts like neural networks, reinforcement learning, adversarial learning, supervised machine learning, decision trees, logistic regression, time series, natural language processing, outlier detection, computer vision, recommendation engines, survival analysis, reinforcement learning, adversarial learning, etc. are paid more.

4. Supporting Technology Knowledge

Being adept with knowledge and execution of technology like Hadoop, Apache servers, SQL basics, etc. although not compulsory, can help you secure better jobs with a higher Data Scientist salary in India. If the company you are applying for applied Big data analytics, knowing Hadoop and apache will automatically become a strong advantage.

5. Non-IT Skills

Along with being strong in the technology part of data science, companies also expect non-IT business skills. Data science and ML are evolving, and businesses expect employees to explore and learn new technologies and methods of implementing data science. Having strong communication skills, business acumen, and importantly, analytical skills is a must.

To summarize, here is a concise checklist of prerequisites that you need to become a Data Scientist with an excellent Data Scientist salary in India.

Data science prerequisites
Data science prerequisites source – data flair

(a) A Bachelor’s, Master’s, and/or Ph.D. Degree in a field that fosters data science.

(b) Strong programming skills.

(c) Basic knowledge of SQL and supporting technology.

(d) String sense of business acumen.

(e) Curiosity to analyze data.

(f) Basics of mathematics and statistics.

Career Growth in Data Science

The number of companies that are hiring and the offered Data Scientist salary in India is a clear indicator of the demand for Data Scientists. Modern consumer behavior trends show that consumers are performing more daily activities online than offline, and this, in turn, steadily increases the amount of data that is produced on a daily basis.

Every bit of data needs analyzing, and this is why Data Scientists are in demand. A report by LinkedIn stated that Data Scientist is the most promising career of 2019, with the average salary at $130,000. They gave ‘Data Scientist’ a career advancement score of nine out of 10.

Here are a few reasons why companies are actively hiring Data Scientists by paying high Data Scientist salary in India:

(i) Companies are churning out massive volumes of data every day. Just managing this data is tedious and needs special skills.

(ii) Data without analysis is meaningless. Only once insights and information are derived from data, it can be actioned upon.

(iii) Data Scientists have skills that are currently in demand. Programming skills in Python, R, and Java, Big Data skills like Hadoop and SQL, etc. each carry individual weight and demand.

(iv) Data privacy and regulations are changing, and companies need dedicated teams to ensure all data management is legal and within defined guidelines.

(v) Data science is an evolving field. Machine learning, AI, NLP, etc. are growing every day and businesses that incorporate them are seeing immediate benefits. This gives Data Scientists great opportunities for career growth and high Data Scientist salary in India.

If you’re interested in becoming a Data Scientist, you are making a wise career decision. Take up a Data Science Course to kickstart your career. As the field evolves, the demand will go up, and Data Scientist salary in India is only bound to increase.

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Alesha Tony
A creative writer and content curator with a passion for literature, who can efficiently strategise and manage various forms of content with flair.

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