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— Written by Mikkel Dengsøe in Articles — 2/16/2023

Europe data salary benchmark 2023

A pay benchmark for data analysts, data scientists, analytics engineers and data engineers across hundreds of companies

Salary is important but little data is available about the topic. We’ve collected data from public sources on compensation from reported salaries and job listings to benchmark European data salaries by seniority, location and company.

Our benchmark looks at total compensation which also includes stock rewards and bonuses to give the most fair comparison. We’ve only looked at data for individual contributors (IC). While we can’t guarantee the accuracy of all data it should give a good indication of compensation in data roles in Europe. For ease of comparison we’ve converted all numbers to USD ($).

Sampling a dozen records from our dataset gives a finger in the air estimate of the pay expectations you should have at each level of seniority but also shows that there’s a lot of variation.

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The goal with the benchmark is to provide an evidence-based approach to evaluation compensation by seniority, location and company.

Compensation by experience level

We’ve looked at the experience level required in job listings and the years of experience for self reported data points to assess seniority. Unsurprisingly, compensation is highly correlated with experience.

  • Junior: Median compensation is $70k with few people, mainly at international tech companies, exceeding $100k
  • Mid: Median compensation is $86k with 25% exceeding $100k
  • Senior: Median compensation is $113k with 25% exceeding $150k
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For each year of experience from year 0 to 6 there’s a clear positive correlation between years of experience and salary. But after year 6 this is no longer the case. In other words, people in IC data roles are rewarded for more experience until year 6. This could be explained by the fact that the data industry has changed fast and many of the most sought after skills and technologies have only come around the last few years.

Company is a strong predictor for compensation across all seniority levels with international tech companies such as Google and Meta having some salaries of $150k reported in the mid experience band.

Compensation by location

Our dataset includes data points from all over Europe but in this part of the analysis we’ve zoomed in on Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, London and Dublin as these had most available data. Cities such as Lisbon, Stockholm and Barcelona could as well have been included.

The contrast between cities is notable

  • German-based roles pay lower. This is partly driven by large Berlin-based companies such as Delivery Hero and Zalando having lower than average compensations
  • London and Dublin based roles have the highest compensations. The Dublin sample is skewed to more senior roles with 55% of reported salaries being senior, so this is more indicate of the sample than jobs in Dublin paying higher than London
  • Top 75% percentile jobs in Amsterdam, London and Dublin pay nearly 50% more than those in Berlin
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Big tech companies such as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft generally pay better. They have a larger presence in London and Dublin which helps bring the average up.

Compensation by company

Segmenting by company reveals insights on how compensation varies within companies. Our sample includes pay from 260 companies but we’ve zoomed in on Zalando, Delivery Hero, Amazon, Booking.com and Meta.

While a 75% percentile job at Zalando or Delivery Hero pays around $100k, at Booking.com or Meta that’s almost double at $180k. Amazon is harder to compare to as there are more mid-level roles while Meta and Booking.com have a larger share of senior roles. The tails at Delivery Hero and Zalando flatten out quickly highlighting that few IC jobs pay more than $100k.

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If you want to earn more than $200k in an IC data role in Europe, you’re most likely to do so if you work at a larger tech company such as Meta, Amazon and Booking.com. A handful of jobs at Airbnb, Google and Meta in Europe reported earning in excess of $300k.

Methodology

We’ve used publicly available job boards and self reported data points on European data pay to collect data for 500 jobs across 260 companies. In cases where a job listing provided a range (i.e. $60-80k) we’ve taken the mid of the range. We’ve converted all numbers from local currencies to USD to make them comparable.

Only data points where we could find the total pay are included as many tech companies pay both stock options and bonuses in addition to the base salary.

We’ve only looked at pay for European-based roles even if some companies such as Amazon and Meta are based out of the US. If we had included US pay, results would likely have been skewed by tech jobs generally being higher paid in the US.

The sample mostly consist of data points from the following job categories: Data Engineer, Data Scientist, Analytics Engineer and Data/Product Analyst. All roles we’ve included have been individual contributor (IC) roles although some of the lead roles may include informal people management. If we had included manager, director and VP level roles, there would be some total compensation packages exceeding what we’ve found for IC roles.

If you want to replicate the analysis or find specific data points, you may be able to search Google for companies and the roles listed to find examples of either a job listing or self reported salaries.