Not if you are a regular data scientist employee . Those high salaries are usually for people with a lot of subject matter expertise or people getting in on the ground floor of a startup . A PhD in ML can prepare you for a data engineer job but not necessarily a data scientist job . If you are really good and are in the west coast new York a $ 100 k job out if school is possible , but $ 80 k is maybe the average . For example , I work in healthcare at a very good hospital on the east coast . An entry level data scientist can get anywhere between 7080 k because you get a lot of good candidates applying with relevant SME . My advice to you , however clichd it might be , would be to not do it for the money . <| sep |> Well it would be a start to give chances to play around it for sure .