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How to become a data scientist: 55 beginner jobs open today
Five steps for people changing careers, with the figures from today’s 373 open data scientist postings: what employers ask for first, how much experience, and what beginners are paid.
- Open jobs today
- 373
- Open to beginners
- 55
- Experience asked, median
- 5 years
- Beginner pay, median
- $168K
Five steps to your first data scientist job
- Know what the work is. A data scientist finds patterns in data and builds models that predict what will happen. Beginner postings today use titles like Data Science Intern; Data Scientist; Data Scientist Intern; Senior Data Scientist; PhD Data Scientist, Intern.
- Learn the skills employers name first. In today’s 373 postings: Python (89%), SQL (81%), Machine Learning (55%), LLM (25%), dbt (14%).
- Build proof you can show. Two or three results with a number, from a job, a course project or volunteer work. The kind of line a recruiter looks for: “Built a churn model in Python that finds 62% of leaving customers a month ahead; the retention team kept $900K of revenue with it”.
- Write the resume and the letter. Start from the data scientist resume example and the cover letter example, and replace every line with your own.
- Apply where beginners are hired. 55 of today’s 373 open data scientist jobs are junior or intern roles or ask for two years of experience or less. See the open jobs and check each one with the resume match checker before you apply.
Questions about becoming a data scientist
- How much experience do data scientist jobs ask for?
- The median in today’s postings is 5 years; 14% of the postings that name a number ask for two years or less.
- Do I need a degree to become a data scientist?
- 15% of today’s 373 postings say no degree is required. Many others accept equivalent experience: read the requirements of each posting.
- How much does a beginner data scientist earn?
- Junior and intern postings for this work that state pay advertise a median of $168K a year (21 postings).
Everything about data scientist work
Counted from the open postings on Nov 14, 2026, read from employers’ own careers pages and recounted on every update. Beginner jobs: junior and intern titles, and postings that ask for two years of experience or less.