Salaries
for business intelligence and data warehousing pros are stagnating. But
big data analytics experts and data scientists are cleaning up, surveys
show.
10 Hadoop Hardware Leaders
(Click image for larger view and slideshow.)
You
say you're an old-school business intelligence or data-warehousing
professional? Well, like many technology professionals, you're likely to
be treading water when it comes to salaries and total compensation.
This
is just one of the conclusions of InformationWeek's new BI &
Analytics Salary Survey 2014. Data from our survey, conducted from
November 2013 to February 2014 among 410 staff and 336 managers shows
BI/analytics staff reporting a median base salary of $87,000 and a
median increase of 1.9%, and management base salaries at a median level
of $110,000 with a median increase of 1.7%. Data integration/warehousing
staff, while faring better than their BI/analytics counterparts with a
median base salary of $100,000, report a median change of 0%. Data
integration/warehousing managers are seeing a healthier median increase
of 2.8%, with a median base salary of $120,000.
[Want more on all 23 categories in our main report? Read the InformationWeek 2014 Salary Survey.]
These
categories and almost all others in our IT-wide survey -- with
11,000-plus respondents across 23 categories -- are, at best, keeping
pace with inflation. It's a different story for big data practitioners
and data scientists, two emerging categories that, as yet, are not
consistently defined. Our survey didn't cover these very new categories
-- but according to recently released reports by Burtch Works, these
new-era data professionals are at the top of the pay scale reported in
InformationWeek's research.
[size=1.08333em]Table 1: Salaries For Data-Savvy Professionals
In
its July 2013 "Salaries for Big Data Professionals Report," Burtch
Works defines big data practitioners as "individuals who can apply
sophisticated quantitative skills to data describing transactions,
interactions, or other behaviors of people to derive insights and
prescribe actions." Surveying 2,845 big data professionals from a Burtch
Works HR database, the study found that the median 2013 base salary for
staff in this category is $90,000, while manager median base salaries
are $145,000.
Burtch
Works' April 2014 "Salaries of Data Scientists" study paints an even
rosier picture. This study defines data scientists as professionals who
"apply their skills to enormous sets of unstructured data, [and who]
also have the skills necessary to efficiently store, retrieve, and
exploit such data." Based on interviews with 171 data scientists from a
Burtch Works employment database, the study finds that the median 2014
base salary for staff is $120,000, while manager median base salaries
are $160,000. These salaries are way above the scale of the 23
categories in the InformationWeek Salary Survey, and they even top the
$150,000 median base salary reported by CIOs in our study.
How
do big data professionals and data scientists differ from the BI,
analytics, data-integration, and data-warehousing types we've been
following for years? Join InformationWeek Radio on Tuesday, May 27, at
2:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. PT), as Linda Burtch, the founder of Burtch
Works and author of its reports, explains the skills and experience
employers are looking for. She'll also discuss how the talent pool is
evolving, and where Burtch Works is finding and placing big data and
data science pros.
Burtch
has more than 30 years of experience placing analytics professionals,
so register for this 30-minute InformationWeek Radio show and plan to be
part of the online chat and Q&A session that follows.
You can use distributed databases without putting your company's crown jewels at risk. Here's how. Also in theData Scatterissue of InformationWeek: A wild-card team member with a different
skill set can help provide an outside perspective that might turn big
data into business innovation. (Free registration required.)
Doug
Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the
intersection of enterprise applications with information management,
business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as
editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of Transform
Magazine, and Executive Editor at DM News. He has covered IT and
data-driven marketing for more than 15 years.