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Information TechnologyTop JobColorado Talent Pipeline Report-aligned occupation with strong annual openings, growth, and wage signals.

Data Scientist

Develop and implement a set of techniques or analytics applications to transform raw data into meaningful information using data-oriented programming languages and visualization software. Apply data mining, data modeling, natural language processing, and machine learning to extract and analyze information from large structured and unstructured datasets. Visualize, interpret, and report data findings. May create dynamic data reports.

Annual openings

611

Median wage

$117,400

Typical education

Training in the appropriate or similar Data Science environment or toolset is often required. For some jobs, a bachelor's degree or graduation from a respected software developer program or bootcamp will be required.

Growth 2026–2032

+22%

Median wage source: Colorado BLS OEWS (2025).

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Career requirements

What does this career require?

Explore education, required qualifications, voluntary credentials and employer preferences for this role. Check the details to see which apply.

Typical education

Training in the appropriate or similar Data Science environment or toolset is often required. For some jobs, a bachelor's degree or graduation from a respected software developer program or bootcamp will be required.

Credential requirement

Credential requirements not reported

Experience detail

No previous work experience is required for some roles, for others, one to three years from a more entry-level position is required. This job could be a first job after completing education or could be a promotion from a lower-level administrator, developer or Business Intelligence Analyst role.

Remote work

Some companies (information technology companies for example) and jobs (such as call center support) offer the opportunity for staff to work remotely, including from rural locations. To see if a job offers this opportunity, please review job postings from job banks such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed or ConnectingColorado, and look for key words such as "location independent", "remote", "virtual", "telecommute", "flex" or for companies posting the same job in many locations.

Employer competency information

  • The Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities information for this job are in development.

Is this work a fit?

What the work actually feels like

How people in this career tend to spend their time, the interests it draws on, and a look at a typical day.

Work style

The type of work can vary by job and employer.

  • With childrenNo
  • On a computerYes
  • OutdoorsNo
  • With your handsNo

Interests it draws on

  • Technology
  • Data Science

Automation exposure

Low exposure

Tasks here lean on judgement and people skills that are hard to automate.

A typical day

  1. Analyze, manipulate, or process large sets of data using statistical software.
  2. Apply feature selection algorithms to models predicting outcomes of interest, such as sales, attrition, and healthcare use.
  3. Apply sampling techniques to determine groups to be surveyed or use complete enumeration methods.
  4. Clean and manipulate raw data using statistical software.
  5. Compare models using statistical performance metrics, such as loss functions or proportion of explained variance.
  6. Create graphs, charts, or other visualizations to convey the results of data analysis using specialized software.
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