Data Scientists
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 2,830.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of data scientists in San Diego earn more.
$130,990 in San Diego buys what $117,100 buys across the country as a whole.
San Diego's regional price parity is 111.9 — well above the national average — a dollar here buys noticeably less than in the US as a whole. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.
What comes next
Median offered base pay by seniority for Data Scientists in San Diego, classified from job titles on visa filings.
The same job, elsewhere in California
Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.
| Metro area | Median | Adjusted | RPP | vs. San Diego |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Jose | $185,080 | $167,600 | 110.4 | +43.2% |
| San Francisco | $170,110 | $147,100 | 115.6 | +25.7% |
| San Diego This page | $130,990 | $117,100 | 111.9 | — |
| Santa Cruz | $130,980 | $119,200 | 109.9 | +1.8% |
| Los Angeles | $129,740 | $114,200 | 113.6 | −2.4% |
| Oxnard | $126,360 | $114,300 | 110.5 | −2.4% |
| Santa Rosa | $119,930 | $111,300 | 107.8 | −5.0% |
| San Luis Obispo | $114,830 | $105,700 | 108.6 | −9.7% |
Price parity and difference against San Diego are in the full table on wider screens.
Nominal against real
The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.
Published pay rose 19.4% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it is roughly flat — data scientists in San Diego earn about what they earned in 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.
How this page was made
- Wage data
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
- Price parity
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
- Career ladder
- Seniority classified from job titles on the same visa filings; levels shown only with five or more filings each and a strictly rising progression.
- Inflation
- Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
- Employment
- 2,830 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
- Occupation
- SOC 15-2051, Data Scientists. Mapped to our taxonomy as data-scientists.
Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.