Technology
Data Scientist in San Francisco
178 postings read · sampled 2026-10-01 · source ats · 46 employers · largest 12% of it
What employers actually ask for
Credentials named in the 178 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.
None. Across 178 postings, no certification or licence was named often enough to call it a requirement. For this role in this market, employers are hiring on demonstrated work rather than credentials — which means money spent on a certificate here is unlikely to be what gets you the interview.
Lower signal for this role
Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.
- CPAAICPA / State Boards of Accountancy1%1 of 178 postings$1,500 exam · fee checked 2026-08~400 hrs prepAICPA / State Boards of Accountancy →
- Master's DegreeAccredited institution3%5 of 178 postingsAccredited institution →
- Bachelor's DegreeAccredited institution3%6 of 178 postingsAccredited institution →
What the official taxonomy says
O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.
- Bachelor’s degree48%
- Master’s degree44%
- Associate’s degree or other 2-year degree4%
Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.
O*NET 15-2051.00 · pulled 2026-10-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100
What it pays
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.
Who was hiring
Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.
OpenAI · Zoox · Roblox · Anthropic · Pinterest · Faire · Lyft · Databricks · Figma · Cursor · Discord · Robinhood · Attentive · Chime · Mercor · Scale AI · Stripe · Braze · Fanatics Commerce · Gusto · Harvey · Hinge Health · Lucid Motors · Perplexity · Physical Intelligence · Suno · Baseten · Checkr · Cognition · Coinbase · Decagon · Instawork · Integrated Resources Inc · Intuitive Surgical · Klaviyo · Kodiak Robotics · Nimble Robotics · Notion · Redwood Materials · Rocket Money · Skild AI · SoFi · SpaceX · Spring Health · Upgrade · Wealthfront
The same role elsewhere
Next
- Roast and Resolve — Now aim your résumé at this target. Free roast, paid rewrite.
- Synap — Two-minute daily lessons to drill the skills underneath the credential.