Data Scientist
SOC 15-2051
Data scientists turn messy data into decisions — cleaning and preparing it, building and validating statistical and machine-learning models, and explaining the result to people who will act on it. ⚠ There is no licence, no entrance examination and, for most people now working in the field, no data science degree: the occupation is older than the major.
Statistics — 6 institutions, 317 completions. The smallest of the core feeders and the one that supplies what employers most often find missing.
Software Developer
SOC 15-1252
Software developers design, build and maintain the systems everything else runs on. ⚠ A median of $135,980 nationally and $130,980 in Florida, on a bachelor's degree, and among the highest-paid on this site — above every two-year route and behind only computer hardware engineering. ⚠⚠ It is a CHOICE path: no single major owns it. Counted degrees show computing majors supplying under a third of working developers and ENGINEERING supplying nearly as many. ⚠⚠⚠ And it is the only career here you can enter with no degree at all — about one developer in five has none.
Statistics. ⚠ A smaller but real feeder: mathematics and statistics graduates enter software development in numbers, and the Data USA counts place fields outside computing and engineering at roughly a third of the occupation.
Financial Analyst
SOC 13-2051
Financial analysts value companies and securities, build the models firms decide by, and measure the risk of being wrong. ⚠ A median of $103,570 with 7% growth. ⚠⚠ It is a CHOICE path, but a concentrated one: counted degrees put business at about half of working analysts, with the social sciences — economics among them — the next largest block. ⚠⚠⚠ And the finding that should redirect some readers: the ANALYTICAL roles in this family are growing at 7% while the ADVISORY ones grow at 1%, despite paying the same or more. This page covers four roles.
Statistics — the smallest of the named feeders but the best-aimed at the highest-paid role in this family. Financial risk specialists earn a median of $117,330 and the work is statistical modelling.