Hiring a data scientist in Detroit, MI

Employers in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI area pay data scientists a median of $103,330, with the middle half of the market between $81,080 and $134,720. Detroit residents working in computer and mathematical occupations report a median of $65,513, which is 37% below what the metro pays for this role.

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What does a data scientist earn here?

Place of work

What employers pay

Annual wages paid by employers in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI area. BLS OEWS, May 2025.
25th percentile	$81,080
Median	$103,330
75th percentile	$134,720

Half of data scientists in this area earn between $81,080 and $134,720. A band set below $81,080 competes for the bottom quarter of the market.

Place of residence

What Detroit residents earn

$65,513

Median earnings of Detroit residents working in computer and mathematical occupations, 4,345 people. Census ACS 5-year 2023, tables S2401 and B24011. Where people live, not where they work, so it is not the same measurement as the wages beside it.

The 37% figure is not a pay gap. ACS counts the civilian employed population 16 and over, part-time and part-year work included; OEWS counts wage-and-salary jobs only. The two populations differ, so read this number against other cities rather than as a shortfall: the same definitional difference applies to every city equally, which is what makes a city-to-city reading sound.

The role pays well above the local residential norm, which usually means you can hire from inside Detroit rather than competing for commuters.

What does the role actually involve?

Core tasks

Analyze, manipulate, or process large sets of data using statistical software.
Apply feature selection algorithms to models predicting outcomes of interest, such as sales, attrition, and healthcare use.
Apply sampling techniques to determine groups to be surveyed or use complete enumeration methods.
Clean and manipulate raw data using statistical software.
Compare models using statistical performance metrics, such as loss functions or proportion of explained variance.

O*NET 29.1, task statements for SOC 15-2051.

Tools and technologies in demand

Amazon Web Services AWS software, Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, C, C++, Docker, Git, Microsoft Azure software.

O*NET 29.1, flagged in demand or hot for this occupation. Useful as a screen, not as a checklist.

Is the talent actually in Detroit?

This is a job zone four: considerable preparation needed occupation. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

That matters here, because 17.6% of Detroit adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. That is a thin local pool for a degree-requiring role, so expect to recruit across the metro rather than inside the city. Census ACS 5-year 2023, table S1501.

The average Detroit commute runs 25.4 minutes, which is roughly how far your catchment reaches before candidates start saying no. 10.1% already work from home, so a fully onsite requirement here is competing against that.

What does the search cost?

The fee is set by the seniority of the role, never by salary and never by location. Across all six tiers it runs $6,240 to $54,340 per search. A contingency firm hiring at this role's median would bill roughly $20,666 to $30,999 on the first year salary alone.

One owner runs the search from market map to signed offer. Searches typically fill in 23 to 35 days, which is a typical window rather than a promise, and the replacement guarantee runs 45 days at 50% off.

Price this search

Eight questions about the role. Your tier range appears on screen.