New SiSense Global Survey: Big Data Pros High on Salary, Low on Resources

First-of-its-kind survey reveals salaries are on the rise, but concerns about job security and resources are prevalent

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SiSense Inc., a leader in Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI), today releases findings of a new salary survey providing insights into compensation trends and drivers for data professionals worldwide. With a shortage of data scientists looming, companies around the world are wondering how to best equip their teams to win with Data. The Data Professional Survey results are based on responses from over 400 professionals spanning the North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia collected online in July 2012. Survey results are available for download here.

SiSense’s survey finds that salaries for data professionals are on the rise across all geographies. The annual earnings of a data professional can range from an average of $55,000 USD for a data analyst to an average of $132,000 for VP Analytics. As many as 61% of the survey respondents reported higher earnings in 2012 compared to 2011, and only 12% reported lower earnings. While a vast majority of the respondents (78%) expect even higher earnings in 2013, close to half of the respondents (47%) expressed concern about their job security.

The survey indicates the data profession is male-dominated: 85% of the respondents are men. At the same time, the results demonstrate that gender equality is more common in the data profession than in others. While OECD data shows that on average across all professions men earn 15% more than women, the SiSense survey shows that women in the data profession earn virtually the same or more than their male counterparts.

Other highlights of the survey findings include:

• Data professionals are highly educated. 85% of the respondents have some college degree, 39% have a Master’s degree, and 5% are Ph.D.’s. Those with doctoral degrees earn on average 65% more than those with Master’s degrees, who in turn earn 16% more than those with Bachelor’s degrees.
• On the job experience is even more important than education in determining salary levels. On average, professionals with ten or more years of experience earn 80% more than those with 3 years or less.
• At the same time, the survey shows that those with 6 years or less make up as much as 59% of the data profession workforce. Bruno Aziza, SiSense VP of Marketing, commented on these findings saying, “The data profession needs a more formal career track. It seems that many professionals exit the field at or around the 6-year mark, moving on to other opportunities. If we don’t formalize data careers more actively, deployment success could continue to remain low and the data industry might evolve slower than others.”
• Most Data Professionals work in teams of up to five people. “Companies are starting to realize that Data is key to their success. The majority of them, though are not growing their Data Science teams fast enough to win. This maybe because they don’t want to or because they can’t. This is an alarming trend though and only software can come to the rescue,” noted Aziza.

Survey results are available for download at http://bit.ly/datahero

About SiSense

SiSense is the fastest way to go from data to insights. SiSense delivers an end-to-end Business Intelligence (BI) solution that allows non-technical users to turn mountains of data into actionable intelligence in hours, not days. Gain insights without having to set up complex data warehouse systems, OLAP cubes, or programming. SiSense enables organizations of all sizes to make sense of their data. From multinationals, such as Target and Merck to startups and SMBs like WeFi. Download a free trial version of the software at http://www.sisense.com/live-demo.aspx