Data Scientists
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 6,060.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of data scientists in San Jose earn more.
$185,080 in San Jose buys what $167,600 buys across the country as a whole.
San Jose's regional price parity is 110.4 — 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 Jose, 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 Jose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Jose This page | $185,080 | $167,600 | 110.4 | — |
| San Francisco | $170,110 | $147,100 | 115.6 | −12.2% |
| San Diego | $130,990 | $117,100 | 111.9 | −30.2% |
| Santa Cruz | $130,980 | $119,200 | 109.9 | −28.9% |
| Los Angeles | $129,740 | $114,200 | 113.6 | −31.8% |
| Oxnard | $126,360 | $114,300 | 110.5 | −31.8% |
| Santa Rosa | $119,930 | $111,300 | 107.8 | −33.6% |
| San Luis Obispo | $114,830 | $105,700 | 108.6 | −36.9% |
Price parity and difference against San Jose are in the full table on wider screens.
Who pays what
Median offered salary from visa filings, which disclose employer, title and exact figure. Government wage surveys never publish at this level.
| Employer | Median offer | Range | Filings | vs. metro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix | $275,850 | $212k – $276k | 13 | +49.0% |
| Anuttacon | $252,000 | $149k – $300k | 10 | +36.2% |
| Bytedance | $225,770 | $117k – $354k | 127 | +22.0% |
| Coupang Global | $225,077 | $137k – $276k | 5 | +21.6% |
| Samsung Electronics America | $220,000 | $185k – $300k | 7 | +18.9% |
| Tiktok | $211,200 | $117k – $440k | 137 | +14.1% |
| Atlassian US | $208,250 | $149k – $264k | 20 | +12.5% |
Offer ranges and filing counts 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 13.4% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it fell 4.6% — prices rose faster than pay since 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.
- Employer pay
- Department of Labor, Labor Condition Application disclosures, FY 2025. The table draws on 319 certified filings across 7 employers.
- 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
- 6,060 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. Visa filings record offered base salary at time of application, exclude equity and bonus, and skew toward larger employers — treat the employer table as a floor, not an average. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.