Data Scientist Salary in New York: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A data scientist in New York earns a median of $130,460 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field falls between $73,330 at the 10th percentile and $214,080 at the 90th, with the typical worker pulling in about $62.72 an hour. That median runs $10,230 ahead of the national figure for the role.

How New York compares to the national median

New York pays its data scientists well above the U.S. baseline. The state median of $130,460 sits $10,230 higher than the national median of $120,230, a premium of roughly 8.5 percent. That gap reflects where the work concentrates. The bulk of New York’s data science jobs cluster in the New York City metro, where finance, media, advertising, and a thick layer of tech firms compete for the same analytical talent and bid pay upward.

The statewide mean tells a similar story. At $137,690, the average sits above the median, which means a meaningful share of high earners pulls the average up. When the mean clears the median by that much, it signals a long upper tail of senior and specialized roles. You can see that tail directly in the percentile spread: the 90th percentile of $214,080 is nearly three times the 10th percentile of $73,330. New York rewards experience and specialization more sharply than most states.

Data scientist pay in New York by experience

Experience moves this number more than almost any other factor. An entry-level data scientist in New York, sitting near the 10th percentile, earns about $73,330. By the time you reach the median you’re at $130,460, and experienced practitioners at the 75th percentile clear $171,580. The senior tier at the 90th percentile reaches $214,080. The jump from median to senior is roughly $83,620, which is more than the entire entry-level salary. That’s the structure of the field: the math, modeling, and production skills that separate a junior from a staff-level data scientist command a steep premium here.

A few things to read into this. First, the climb from early career to median is large, about $35,580, and it usually happens fast once you can own a project end to end and ship models that survive contact with production. Second, the gap between the 25th and 75th percentiles, $76,700, is wider than what you’ll find for most analyst roles, which tells you negotiation and specialization pay off. If you’re sitting at the median and stalling, the next tier is real money and it’s reachable.

It helps to translate these percentiles into the kind of role they usually map to. The $73,330 entry figure is roughly what a new grad or career-switcher lands in a junior analytics or associate data scientist seat. By the time you’re owning models in production and mentoring juniors, you’re at or above the $130,460 median. The $171,580 experienced mark tends to belong to staff-level individual contributors and specialists in machine learning, while the $214,080 senior figure is principal, lead, or manager territory, often in finance or large tech employers downstate. The same skills can pay very differently depending on the title you negotiate for, so it’s worth knowing which band your scope actually sits in.

One more point on the shape of these numbers. Because the 90th percentile is nearly triple the 10th, two data scientists in New York with the same job title can be separated by more than $140,000 in gross pay. That spread is unusual. It means the field rewards a small set of high-impact skills, production machine learning, experimentation design, and domain expertise in finance or risk, far out of proportion to years of experience alone. Picking up one of those specialties is often worth more than another two years in a generalist role.

Data scientist salary by New York metro

Where you work inside New York matters more than people expect. The New York City metro doesn’t just hold most of the jobs, it pays the most per job. Here are the five largest metros in the state by data scientist employment, with the local median for each.

The New York City metro is in a class of its own. Its median of $135,980 runs $43,180 above Rochester, the lowest-paying of these five, and it concentrates 23,160 of the state’s 23,970 data scientist jobs. Practically every data science position in New York is downstate. The upstate metros tell a different and more affordable story. Syracuse leads the upstate group at $108,680, followed by Buffalo at $102,250 and Albany at $98,940. Those medians look modest next to the city, but pair them with upstate housing costs and the take-home math shifts in their favor, which is the point of the next section.

If you can work remotely for a downstate or out-of-state employer while living in Rochester, Buffalo, or Albany, you may capture city-tier pay against an upstate cost base. That combination is the single most effective lever on real income in this state, more than any certificate or title change.

Look closer at the employment numbers and the picture sharpens. Rochester has the largest upstate footprint at 1,190 data scientists, ahead of Buffalo’s 840 and Albany’s 830, yet Rochester also posts the lowest median at $92,800. Syracuse, with just 350 jobs, leads the upstate pay table at $108,680, which suggests a thinner but more specialized employer mix there. The takeaway for a job seeker is that upstate the number of openings and the local median don’t move together, so each metro is worth pricing individually rather than treating “upstate” as one market.

For someone weighing a move within New York, the practical question is whether the downstate premium survives cost of living. The $135,980 city median beats Albany’s $98,940 by $37,040 on paper. Whether that holds up depends entirely on housing, which is where the city gives a lot of that premium back. The next section runs the after-tax math so you can see what each gross figure actually leaves in your pocket before rent.

Take-home pay after tax in New York

Gross salary isn’t what lands in your account. New York taxes income at the state level, and as a data scientist here you’ll also pay federal income tax plus FICA for Social Security and Medicare. The table below breaks down each career stage, showing federal tax, FICA, New York state tax, net annual pay, and net monthly pay.

At the median, a New York data scientist keeps $93,143 of a $130,460 salary, an effective tax burden of about 28.6 percent across federal, FICA, and state. That works out to roughly $7,762 a month. The effective rate climbs as you move up the ladder, reaching 31.2 percent at the senior level, where progressive federal brackets and New York’s graduated state tax both bite harder.

Watch how the components shift across the four stages. At entry, New York state tax is just $3,428 and the total effective rate is 22.9 percent. At the senior level the state bill rises to $11,797 and the rate hits 31.2 percent. FICA, by contrast, flattens out: it climbs from $5,610 at entry to $14,149 at the senior tier, but its share of each marginal dollar shrinks once you pass the Social Security wage cap. So as you climb, the federal income tax and New York state tax are what eat the larger slices of each raise, not payroll tax. That matters when you’re deciding whether a $40,000 bump is worth a tougher role, because a chunk of it goes straight to higher brackets.

Here’s the comparison that actually decides where some people live. Take the same $130,460 median salary and run it through Texas, which levies no state income tax. A data scientist earning the New York median would net about $99,922 in Texas versus $93,143 in New York. That’s a difference of $6,779 a year, kept purely by avoiding state income tax. Over a decade that gap is more than $67,000 in nominal terms before any raises or compounding. New York’s higher gross median, $130,460 against the role’s national figure, offsets some of that, but the state tax is a real and recurring cost you should price in.

The number that matters most isn’t gross pay or even net pay. It’s net pay minus local housing. New York City rents and home prices are among the highest in the country, so a city data scientist netting $7,762 a month can end up with less discretionary income than an upstate or Texas peer earning a smaller gross. Before you accept an offer, subtract your real housing cost from net monthly and compare that figure across locations. Run your own numbers with the New York paycheck calculator, and if you want help with brackets, deductions, and a clean filing, TurboTax walks through New York state and federal in one pass.

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How to earn more as a data scientist in New York

The percentile spread in this state is wide, which means there’s real room to move up. Concrete steps that move the number:

• Target the New York City metro. Its $135,980 median is the highest in the state by a wide margin, and it holds nearly all the jobs. If you’re upstate and willing to relocate or go hybrid, that alone can add tens of thousands.
• Specialize where the money concentrates. Finance, ad-tech, and fraud or risk modeling are dense in New York and pay above the general median. Moving from generalist analytics into ML engineering, experimentation, or causal inference is what pushes you toward the $171,580 experienced tier and beyond.
• Build production credibility. The jump from the 50th to the 90th percentile, $83,620, is paid to people who can ship models that run reliably at scale, not just prototype in a notebook. Cloud platforms, pipelines, and MLOps skills are the dividing line.
• Stack credentials that employers actually screen for. Cloud certifications (AWS, GCP, Azure) and structured ML coursework signal readiness for senior work. Programs on Coursera in machine learning, deep learning, and cloud data engineering are a low-cost way to close specific gaps.
• Negotiate against the upper percentiles, not the median. Walk in knowing the 75th percentile here is $171,580. If your skills match that tier, anchor there. The gap between median and 75th, about $41,120, is often left on the table by people who quote the median back at themselves.
• Use the upstate cost arbitrage. A remote role paying near the city median while you live in Buffalo or Rochester can beat a higher gross in Manhattan once housing comes out.

Job outlook for data scientists in New York

Demand is the strongest part of this picture. New York employs 23,970 data scientists, and the role is one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country, driven by the spread of machine learning and analytics across finance, healthcare, retail, and media. The state’s concentration in finance and advertising gives data scientists here a deep and durable employer base, from banks and hedge funds to ad-tech and large publishers. Roughly 23,160 of those jobs sit in the New York City metro, so the opportunity is geographically dense but downstate-weighted.

If you’re job hunting, the breadth of New York’s economy is your advantage. The same skill set sells to a trading desk, a hospital system, a streaming service, and a retailer. To see what’s live and at what pay band, ZipRecruiter lists current New York data scientist openings with salary ranges you can sanity-check against the percentiles above.

Related and higher-paying roles in New York

Data science isn’t the top of the technical pay ladder in New York, and it’s well above some neighboring roles. Compared against this role’s state median of $130,460:

• Software Developer earns a median of $166,180 in New York, which is $35,720 more than a data scientist here. If you’re strong on engineering, that’s a meaningful step up.
• Computer Systems Analyst earns a median of $109,610, which is $20,850 less than a data scientist in New York. Data science pays a clear premium over systems analysis in this state.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) 2025; ThePayGuide tax modeling for tax year 2026. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.