There is no doubt about the fact that Data Scientist is a trending job role. Infact, almost all industrialized countries are utilizing data science in some amount, shape or form and data scientists are in demand in most countries. Yet, there is a lingering question on data scientists’ salaries in various countries.

While we continuously hear about data scientist being one of the highest paid jobs around the world, there’s not enough literature/ research on what exactly these salaries are in various countries.

So, we decided to work on this one ourselves. Here we plan to uncover the top 10 highest paying countries to data scientist, both in absolute dollar terms and Purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. Here’s how we did it-

• Extracted salary information for data scientists through various online portal that included:

1. Job boards like Indeed & monster
2. Country specific job boards
3. Salary research sites like glassdoor & payscale
4. Various online blogs & discussion forums

• Found median salaries for each country
• Converted the local currency to dollars
• Converted the dollars to PPP relative to US$ using Big Mac index of 2013.

Here’s how to read this information:

• These salaries are not directly reflective of the demand for data scientists in these countries. Salaries in a country are influenced by various factor apart from the demand, like minimum basic salaries, exchange rates & purchasing power
• These are median salaries across all experience levels, industries and skills for data scientists. The goal is to provide a single number across countries that show the parity. We acknowledge the fact that there would be a range of salaries that would be dependent on various factors at work.

So, here are top 10 countries that pay the most to Data Scientists, along with the median salaries in $.

1) USA                       $1,12,000

2) Switzerland          $1,10,895

3) Norway                 $87,353

4) Australia              $66,499

5) Canada                 $55,104

6) Germany              $54,329

7) South Africa         $54,100

8) France                   $48,933

9) Netherlands         $46,148

10) UK                         $45,248

Top 10 countries that pay the most to Data Scientists in PPP terms.

1) USA                       $1,12,000

2) South Africa         $83,314

3) Norway                $69,882

4) Switzerland          $69,864

5) China/ Hong Kong $62,057

6) UK                         $46,605

7) Russia                   $39,150

8) Singapore            $38,514

9) Indonesia             $37,981

10) India                   $28,868

By the way, India is among top 10 countries according to purchasing power parity.