Data Scientist Salary in North Carolina: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A data scientist in North Carolina earns a median of $119,090 a year, or about $57.25 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field lands between roughly $82,440 and $147,540, with entry-level pay near $65,970 and the top 10% clearing $172,830. That puts North Carolina just under the national median for the role.

How North Carolina compares to the national median

North Carolina pays data scientists a median of $119,090, while the national median for the role is $120,230, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). That’s a gap of $1,140, or about 0.9% below the U.S. middle. For a job that often pays $140,000-plus on the coasts, North Carolina sits close to the national center, which is a strong showing once you factor in what a dollar buys here.

The state mean, or average, is $121,270, slightly above the median. When the mean runs higher than the median, it usually means a cluster of high earners at the top is pulling the average up. You can see that in the spread: the 90th percentile ($172,830) sits more than $100,000 above the 10th percentile ($65,970). The role rewards experience and specialization heavily, and the gap between a junior and a senior data scientist in North Carolina is wide.

Data scientist salary in North Carolina by experience

Experience is the single biggest lever on pay in this field. The BLS percentile data gives a clean read on the full curve, from someone in their first year to a principal-level scientist running models in production. Here’s how the North Carolina numbers break down.

The jump from entry to median is the steepest part of the climb. A first-year data scientist starting near $65,970 who reaches the mid-career median is looking at $119,090, an increase of more than $53,000. Crossing from the 25th to the 50th percentile alone adds about $36,650. That early stretch usually comes from two things: moving out of a junior or analyst title into a true data scientist role, and picking up production-grade skills like deploying models rather than just building them in a notebook.

Past the median, the gains get larger in dollar terms but harder to earn. Going from the median to the 75th percentile adds $28,450, and reaching the 90th percentile adds another $25,290 on top of that. At that level you’re typically leading projects, owning a modeling domain, or carrying a staff or principal title. The senior band of $147,540 to $172,830 is where Charlotte’s finance employers and the larger Triangle tech firms compete hardest.

It helps to read these percentiles as a distribution rather than a ladder you climb on a fixed schedule. The middle half of North Carolina data scientists, the people between the 25th and 75th percentiles, earn between $82,440 and $147,540. That’s a $65,100 spread inside the “normal” range, which tells you title alone doesn’t set your pay. Two people both called “data scientist” in the same metro can sit $40,000 apart depending on whether they ship production models, lead a team, or work in a high-paying sector like banking. When you benchmark your own number, find your percentile first, then ask what the people one band above you are doing that you aren’t.

One more thing the experience curve hides: the hourly figures matter if you’re contracting or weighing an offer with unpaid overtime. The median works out to $57.25 an hour, the 75th percentile to about $70.93, and the senior 90th to about $83.09. If a salaried role expects 50-hour weeks, divide your offer by the real hours, not 2,080, before you compare it to a contract rate.

Data scientist salary by North Carolina metro

Where you work inside the state matters as much as your title. North Carolina’s data science jobs concentrate in a handful of metros, and the pay gap between the top and bottom of that list is over $30,000 at the median. This is the part of the picture a generic national average can’t give you.

Charlotte leads clearly. At a $132,460 median, it pays about $13,370 above the statewide median and roughly $12,230 more than the national figure. That’s driven by Charlotte’s banking and financial services base, where data scientists work on fraud detection, credit risk, and pricing models. Charlotte also has the deepest market by far, with 4,420 data scientists employed, nearly 39% of the entire state’s headcount in the role.

Raleigh-Cary comes next at $120,710, almost exactly the national median, with 1,990 jobs anchored by the Research Triangle’s tech and pharma employers. Durham-Chapel Hill, despite sitting inside the same Triangle research cluster, posts a lower median of $106,500, which often reflects a mix of university, nonprofit, and research-grant roles alongside private industry. Greensboro-High Point and Winston-Salem round out the list at $106,060 and $101,570; both are smaller markets where total data science headcount stays under 400.

It’s worth pausing on the Durham number, because it surprises people. The Triangle has a national reputation as a research hub, yet Durham-Chapel Hill’s $106,500 median trails Raleigh-Cary by $14,210 and Charlotte by $25,960. The gap isn’t about talent; it’s about who’s signing the checks. Universities, hospital systems, and grant-funded labs pay on different scales than a bank’s quantitative risk desk. If you live in the Triangle and want Charlotte-level pay, the move is often sector first, location second: a remote or hybrid role with a financial-services or large-tech employer can pay the Charlotte premium while you keep your Durham address.

The practical takeaway: if you’re optimizing for raw pay, Charlotte is the answer, and the gap between it and Winston-Salem ($30,890 at the median) is large enough to outweigh most cost-of-living differences inside the state. If you want the densest job market for switching employers without relocating, Charlotte and Raleigh together hold roughly 56% of the state’s data science jobs, 6,410 of the 11,430 statewide. Greensboro-High Point (370 jobs) and Winston-Salem (300 jobs) are thin markets by comparison, so if you’re set on either, expect fewer local employers and more competition for each opening, which is another reason remote work matters more outside the two big metros.

Take-home pay after taxes in North Carolina

Gross salary is the headline; take-home is what hits your account. North Carolina charges a flat state income tax, so every data scientist pays the same state rate regardless of bracket. Here’s the after-tax picture at four points on the pay curve, including federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and North Carolina state tax. These figures assume a single filer with the standard deduction and no extra withholdings.

At the median salary of $119,090, a single filer keeps about $87,632 a year, or $7,303 a month, after federal, FICA, and state tax. That’s an effective rate of roughly 26.4%. The rate climbs as you move up: the entry-level effective rate is about 20.4%, and the senior 90th-percentile figure reaches about 29.4%, because federal tax is progressive even though North Carolina’s state rate is flat.

Look at where the money goes at each stage and the structure becomes clear. At entry ($65,970), federal income tax takes $6,127 and FICA takes $5,047, so payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare is actually the larger bite at the bottom of the scale. By the senior level ($172,830), federal tax has grown to $30,726 while FICA is $13,221, because the progressive federal brackets do the heavy lifting once income climbs. North Carolina’s flat state tax stays proportional the whole way, $2,262 at entry and $6,803 at the senior level, which is why a high earner’s effective rate rises only a few points: the state isn’t adding to the squeeze the way a graduated-rate state would.

The monthly numbers are the ones to live by. Entry-level take-home is about $4,378 a month, the median is $7,303, the experienced 75th percentile is $8,822, and the senior 90th is $10,173. Going from the median to the senior band adds $2,870 a month in your pocket after every tax, which is the real-world reward for climbing from the middle to the top 10% of the field in this state.

Here’s the cross-state comparison worth knowing. Take that same $119,090 median and earn it in Texas instead, a state with no income tax, and your take-home rises to about $92,151. In North Carolina you net $87,632. The difference is $4,519 a year, which is the exact amount North Carolina collects in state income tax at the median. That’s roughly $377 a month you’d keep in Texas that you hand to Raleigh here. It’s real money, and it’s also the entire delta, since North Carolina’s lower housing costs in most metros often close that gap and then some.

That’s the framing that actually matters: net pay minus local housing is the real number. A $7,303 monthly take-home in Charlotte or Raleigh stretches further than a higher gross in San Francisco or Austin once rent, property tax, and groceries are in. Before you accept an offer or compare two states, run the exact figure through the North Carolina paycheck calculator, then subtract a realistic monthly housing cost for the metro you’d live in. When tax season comes, filing software like TurboTax can handle the flat-rate state return and flag deductions a data scientist might miss, such as home-office or continuing-education costs.

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How to earn more as a data scientist in North Carolina

The data shows clear paths to a bigger number. Each step below maps to a real gap in the BLS figures, not generic advice.

• Target Charlotte, even remotely. The Charlotte median of $132,460 sits $13,370 above the statewide median. If you can land a Charlotte-based or finance-sector role, that’s the single fastest geographic raise inside North Carolina. The banking employers there pay a premium for risk and fraud modeling.
• Cross from the median to the 75th percentile. Moving from $119,090 to $147,540 is a $28,450 jump. It usually comes from owning a modeling domain end to end, shipping models into production, and taking on technical leadership rather than ticket-by-ticket work.
• Specialize in machine learning engineering and MLOps. The senior band ($147,540 to $172,830) rewards people who can deploy, monitor, and scale models, not just train them. Cloud platform skills (AWS, Azure, GCP) and production pipeline experience are what separate the 75th from the 90th percentile.
• Stack credentials that map to the work. Cloud certifications and machine learning specializations carry weight with North Carolina’s finance and pharma employers. Structured courses through Coursera in deep learning, ML engineering, or a cloud certification track are a low-cost way to fill the exact gaps that block a promotion.
• Move into the financial-services sector specifically. Charlotte’s banking base is the reason its metro median outpaces the rest of the state. Domain knowledge in credit, payments, or risk is directly monetizable here.
• Negotiate against the percentile data. If you’re past three to five years of experience and your offer is near the $119,090 median, you have room. The 75th percentile is $147,540, and pointing to BLS state data for your metro gives you a defensible anchor.

Job outlook for data scientists in North Carolina

North Carolina employs 11,430 data scientists as of the BLS 2025 release, and the role is one of the fastest-growing in the country nationally. The state’s two engines, Charlotte’s financial sector and the Research Triangle’s tech and pharma cluster, both lean heavily on data and analytics, so demand is concentrated and durable. Charlotte alone accounts for 4,420 of those jobs, with Raleigh-Cary adding 1,990.

For anyone job-hunting, the depth of the Charlotte and Raleigh markets means you can usually change employers without relocating, which strengthens your negotiating position. Listings move quickly in both metros; setting alerts on a board like ZipRecruiter for “data scientist” plus your metro is a practical way to track openings and benchmark live salary offers against the BLS numbers above.

Related and higher-paying roles in North Carolina

If you’re weighing data science against adjacent tech roles in the same state, here’s how the median pay compares, using BLS North Carolina figures for each.

• Software Developer: median $134,710 in North Carolina, which is $15,620 MORE than a data scientist’s $119,090 median here. Software developers are the higher-paying adjacent role in this state, and the skill overlap (Python, engineering practices, version control) makes it a realistic pivot.
• Computer Systems Analyst: median $106,850 in North Carolina, which is $12,240 LESS than a data scientist earns here. The role trades some pay for a path that’s often less code-intensive and more business-facing.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025 (occupation 15-2051, North Carolina and metro detail); federal and North Carolina 2026 tax parameters for take-home estimates. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.