💡 Why it matters: Banks, phone companies and health organisations want to predict things like fraud, customer needs and disease spread. That takes people who mix maths, coding and curiosity.
💰 What it can pay
🇳🇬 Nigeria
- Starting out
- ₦2M – ₦5M
- Mid-career
- ₦6M – ₦14M
- Senior
- ₦14M – ₦32M
≈ ₦500k – ₦1.2M a month mid-career. Indicative estimate by Incusim.
🇺🇸 United States
Median pay; low and high are the 10th and 90th percentiles. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025
🇨🇦 Canada
Hourly wage low/median/high x 2,080 hours. Job Bank (Government of Canada), 2023-2024
Yearly pay before tax. UK, US and Canada figures come from the official sources named on each card. Nigeria has no official salary survey, so those are our indicative estimates. Real pay depends on the employer, the place, your skills and experience.
🛠️ What you actually do
- Build models that predict outcomes
- Explore large sets of data for patterns
- Test ideas with experiments
- Turn results into clear recommendations
- Work with engineers to put models into real products
⚡ Skills you'll need
- Maths and statistics
- Python coding
- Curiosity
- Storytelling with data
- Patience
Get ready at school
🇳🇬 Nigeria
- Data science bootcamp after a numbers-based degree
- Growing from data analyst to data scientist with self-study
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Data scientist degree apprenticeship (study while you work)
- Growing from data analyst to data scientist with self-study
🇺🇸 United States
- Data science bootcamp after a numbers-based degree
- Growing from data analyst to data scientist with self-study
🇨🇦 Canada
- College co-op programs with paid placements
- Growing from data analyst to data scientist with self-study
🗺️ Your path to this career
- 1Build a strong foundation in Maths
- 2Learn Python and basic statistics
- 3Study Statistics, Maths or Computer Science
- 4Complete projects and enter data competitions
- 5Join as a data analyst, then grow into data science
⏰ A day in the life
You test a model that guesses which loan customers might struggle to repay. After checking it works fairly, you explain the results to the risk team using simple charts and no maths jargon.