Cyber security engineer vs data scientist

The differences between cyber security engineers and data scientists can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a cyber security engineer, becoming a data scientist takes usually requires 2-4 years. Additionally, a data scientist has an average salary of $106,104, which is higher than the $99,492 average annual salary of a cyber security engineer.

The top three skills for a cyber security engineer include cyber security, python and linux. The most important skills for a data scientist are python, data science, and visualization.

Cyber security engineer vs data scientist overview

	Cyber Security Engineer	Data Scientist
Yearly salary	$99,492	$106,104
Hourly rate	$47.83	$51.01
Growth rate	32%	16%
Number of jobs	73,419	106,973
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 60%	Bachelor's Degree, 51%
Average age	42	41
Years of experience	6	4

What does a cyber security engineer do?

A cyber security engineer specializes in designing and establishing security measures to protect a company's network and data from hackers or cyber attacks. Their responsibilities primarily revolve around planning and implementing cyber security systems, responding to any problems or concerns, handling security breaches and emergencies, and troubleshooting to identify any issues or vulnerabilities. Moreover, a cyber security engineer may perform clerical tasks such as producing progress reports and documentation, creating instructional materials for systems, managing schedules, and coordinating with department managers, all while adhering to the company's policies and regulations.

What does a data scientist do?

A Data Scientist analyzes information from multiple sources in order to gain maximum insight that can give the company a competitive advantage. They work in different domains, including manufacturing, healthcare, education, and finance.

Cyber security engineer vs data scientist salary

Cyber security engineers and data scientists have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Cyber Security Engineer	Data Scientist
Average salary	$99,492	$106,104
Salary range	Between $75,000 And $131,000	Between $75,000 And $148,000
Highest paying City	San Francisco, CA	Richmond, CA
Highest paying state	California	California
Best paying company	Dotdash	The Citadel
Best paying industry	Technology	Start-up

Differences between cyber security engineer and data scientist education

There are a few differences between a cyber security engineer and a data scientist in terms of educational background:

	Cyber Security Engineer	Data Scientist
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 60%	Bachelor's Degree, 51%
Most common major	Computer Science	Computer Science
Most common college	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Columbia University in the City of New York

Cyber security engineer vs data scientist demographics

Here are the differences between cyber security engineers' and data scientists' demographics:

	Cyber Security Engineer	Data Scientist
Average age	42	41
Gender ratio	Male, 83.8% Female, 16.2%	Male, 79.6% Female, 20.4%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 9.2% Unknown, 6.1% Hispanic or Latino, 9.0% Asian, 9.6% White, 65.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%	Black or African American, 4.2% Unknown, 5.4% Hispanic or Latino, 6.9% Asian, 18.8% White, 64.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.6%
LGBT Percentage	9%	9%

Differences between cyber security engineer and data scientist duties and responsibilities

Cyber security engineer example responsibilities.

Facilitate and manage weekly meetings between CyberCom, DISA and all OSD components.
Manage security patching life cycle and approve change control requests, firewall rules and DLP policies.
Manage, configure, and maintain all servers within the environments, including Cisco network routers, switches, and firewalls.
Lead security authorization efforts to obtain and maintain an authorization to operate (ATO) for customers' core financial system.
Manage efforts to consolidate customer VPN infrastructure.
Lead numerous DLP upgrades and process improvements and successfully implement application security program.

Data scientist example responsibilities.

Update, maintain, and manage regional CRM database and records for customers, vendors, and suppliers.
Configure and manage JobScope ERP system for a make-to-order/make-to-stock design and manufacturing environment.
Lead the analysis in SAS for data integration of mortality data using meta-analysis integration methods.
Implement a proximal stochastic gradient descent with a line search to fit a regularize logistic regression in Scala
Perform cross-validation-test on linear regression model of data using scikit-learn.
Develop python base statistical visualization to provide insights of fuzzy social media data.

Cyber security engineer vs data scientist skills

Common cyber security engineer skills

Cyber Security, 17%
Python, 5%
Linux, 4%
Architecture, 4%
NIST, 4%
Incident Response, 4%

Common data scientist skills

Python, 13%
Data Science, 10%
Visualization, 5%
Java, 4%
Hadoop, 4%
Tableau, 3%

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Cyber Security Engineer vs Data Scientist

Updated January 8, 2025

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