Google Data Scientist Salary

All the details about earning your salary as a data scientist at Google.

In these kinds of articles, we often repeat how data scientist is one of the hottest jobs there is on the market. With the opportunities and prestige it offers, Google is also one of the most popular employers. Its size, worldwide presence, and the sheer amount of jobs it offers only compound the company’s attractiveness. Now combine that: one of the most popular jobs at the one of the most popular employers? The hotness of this combination is hard to bear.

Why? Among other things, a data science career really pays well, and Google pays its data scientists above the national average. We’ll have a look at the details of what you could get salary-wise and benefits-wise if you start working as a data scientist at Google. If you want a broader overview, we recommend the Google Data Scientist Position Guide, which will give you the complete profile of Google as a company and data science positions.

What Does a Data Scientist Do at Google?

With Google being an international company that employs almost 140,000 people worldwide, it surely provides a wide array of different job descriptions and responsibilities for data scientists. Its operations are divided into teams (you can look at them as departments), and most of the teams require a data scientist role one way or another.

Generically, you can think of data science at Google requiring these skills, which also frame the job descriptions:

Technical Skill:

1. Programming
2. Data manipulation, analysis, and visualization
3. Data modeling
4. Model building, testing, and deploying
5. Machine learning
6. AI
7. Cloud computing
8. APIs
9. Statistics and mathematics

Those are skills that will be tested, for example, by this kind of problem posed at the interview:

Answer:

SELECT mode() WITHIN GROUP (
                            ORDER BY val) AS price_willing_to_pay_per_employee
FROM
  (SELECT adwords_earnings / n_employees::float AS val
   FROM google_adwords_earnings
   WHERE business_type = 'handyman'
     AND n_employees <= 10) base

However, differences between the data scientist and the data scientist at Google can be very significant when the seniority of the position and specific job descriptions is taken into account.

For example, there’s a Data Scientist, Mobile Assistant job ad with the following responsibilities:

As you can see, this position is heavily focused on Google products, specifically Google Assistant, Search, and Discover for Mobile users.

Then there is, for example, a Data Scientist, Ads Insight and Measurement job ad. Its responsibilities are:

This data science job is not focused on the technical aspect of the particular product but more on the product advertising and marketing data.

Speaking of seniority, it also influences the job description. Have a look at this Data Scientist Technical Lead job:

This job will not only have you work with data, but you also have to manage a complete data science team.

Now that you have an idea of the data science jobs diversity at Google, we can have a closer look at job levels. The salary, of course, heavily depends on them.

Google Data Scientist Job Levels

There are no clear data available on data scientist levels, so we will use the software engineer levels and apply it to data science jobs. There are probably some differences in names and descriptions, but they for sure are not that significant. It’s important that you get a feeling of what a specific level requires and how much it pays.

There are nine job levels for data scientists at Google:

L3 - Data Scientist II - an entry-level position usually requiring zero or up to 1 year of experience.
L4 - Data Scientist III - usually requiring 2-5 years of experience.
L5 - Senior Data Scientist - usually requiring more than 5 years of experience.
L6 - Staff Data Scientist - usually requiring 5-8 years of experience.
L7 - Senior Staff Data Scientist - usually more than 8 years of experience.
L8 - L11 - considered executive roles and usually recruited internally after plenty of years spent at Google

Google Data Scientist Salary

After going through the job levels, Google data scientist salaries and their range will be much more clear now.

According to Glassdoor, data scientists at Google earn $154,922 annually on average. This is base pay, with an additional pay of $78,804 per year.

Now you have a general feeling about the Google data scientist salary. Let’s now have a look at Google data scientist salary according to seniority level. All data is from Levels.fyi. Later on, we’ll also talk about the benefits you get working as a data scientist at Google.

As you can see, data scientists earn from $145k for an entry-level position. It goes way up with your seniority, so if you have 5-8 years of experience, you could be earning $549k a year.

Unfortunately, there are no data for other levels, but those four levels in the table are generally position levels you can get from the outside. Even level L7 is rarely advertised. And for all the positions above, the candidates are looked for internally or through some executive sponsorship and headhunting.

Also, check out our post "Data Scientist Salary" to know how other big, smaller and medium-sized companies make an effort to keep their offers competitive.

Google Benefits

Aside from the non-material benefits of working for Google, there are also the material ones. Like most modern companies, Google offers plenty of benefits to their employees.

These benefits are of the estimated value of nearly $24k, according to Levels.fyi. We’re going to break these benefits down. Also, we’re not going to list all the benefits, but only the ones we consider the most significant ones. For all the benefits listed and details about them, you can consult Levels.fyi.

Conclusion

It is true, working as a data scientist for Google sounds like a jackpot to many people. No wonder, given that it’s one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Working for such a company gives you plenty of opportunities to be in touch with cutting-edge technology, learn, and advance in your career both knowledge-wise and hierarchy-wise. The money you can earn there is not to be underestimated, either.

Even if you’re a fresh graduate, data shows you can earn around $169k a year with all the benefits. It’s not only big money for someone with no experience. This also puts you well above the median US salary, which is $74,580k. For the top non-executive data science positions, you can earn around $573k, including the benefits.

However, you’re not getting that for free! You usually need to have a degree in relevant fields and plenty of technical skills to earn a place as a data scientist at Google. You will for sure need some guidance on getting a job, and our ultimate guide to becoming a data scientist at Google is perfect for that. You will also like to know what questions you’ll get at these interviews, so we’ve prepared the Google data scientist interview guide.

If you have all these predispositions and you’re serious about your interview preparation, then you’ll deserve every penny you earn as a data scientist at Google.