I’d be lying if I said money wasn’t important to me. I think a lot of people would be lying, too. Like that baseball player that just signed the $250 mil. contract: “It wasn’t about the money…” Yeah, OK. Sure, pal.

It’s important to me for different reasons: I have a mortgage to pay, a wife and dog, and plenty of bills and student loans. In short, money is important to ensure these different things (and animal and a human) get taken care of.

To really live the big bucks life, though, perhaps I should have explored a career in Big Data. The enterprise love affair with, and appetite for, Big Data is accelerating the need for these analytically inclined skill sets. And they don’t come cheap.

Here are five Big Data careers that each earn over that magic $100k mark (listed highest to lowest in salary).

Note: Take the “average” salaries listed below with a grain of salt, as the ranges can fluctuate wildly depending on location, whether the organization is a startup or a blue-chip company, etc. But make no mistake, each of these five positions will earn you a chunk of change.


Chief Data Officer
$175,000 (Source: SimplyHired)

Data Engineer (with domain expertise)
$130,000 (Source: DataJobs)

Data Warehouse Manager
$124,335
(Source: Salary.com)

Data Scientist
$118,081
(Source: Glassdoor)

Data Architect
$106,680
(Source: Glassdoor)


What’s most notable out of the bunch is the Chief Data Officer position — this one has only recently come on the scene, and not every company has one. However, companies are increasingly seeing the value in this C-level role that provides vision and strategy for all data management activities.

Aberdeen Group is actually one of them with our own Chief Data Officer, Charlie Allieri, whom will be interviewed soon on Big Data Pro Essentials, so stay tuned. We won’t be asking him about his salary.