Hiring a data scientist in San Diego, CA

Employers in the San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA area pay data scientists a median of $130,990, with the middle half of the market between $93,420 and $164,160. San Diego residents working in computer and mathematical occupations report a median of $116,218, which is 11% 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 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA area. BLS OEWS, May 2025.
25th percentile	$93,420
Median	$130,990
75th percentile	$164,160

Half of data scientists in this area earn between $93,420 and $164,160. A band set below $93,420 competes for the bottom quarter of the market.

Place of residence

What San Diego residents earn

$116,218

Median earnings of San Diego residents working in computer and mathematical occupations, 45,432 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 11% 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 San Diego 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 San Diego?

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 49.9% of San Diego adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. That is a deep local pool for a degree-requiring role. Census ACS 5-year 2023, table S1501.

The average San Diego commute runs 23.9 minutes, which is roughly how far your catchment reaches before candidates start saying no. 19.2% already work from home, so a fully onsite requirement here is competing against that.

How often do these jobs turn over?

In San Diego County, computer systems design and related services employs 27,781 and turns over 6.4% a quarter, with 2,142 hires against 2,552 separations. Average earnings in that industry run $14,369 a month. Census LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators, 2024 Q1, NAICS 5415.

That figure covers every occupation in the industry, not this role alone, so read it as the local churn rate rather than as a number about data scientists. It still tells you what you are hiring into: a low-churn market, where people do not move often and passive candidates are the whole game.

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 $26,198 to $39,297 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

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