The software engineering ladder is wider, not taller, than Data Scientist—DS roles typically specialize to a domain earlier than SDE, and the variance in pay across companies and specialties shows more for DS than SDE. Data Engineer usually implies a bit less independence and more well-defined problems, and pays a bit less overall.
The good meta-advice is to spend some effort thinking about your comparative advantage(s), and to recognize that taking a job isn’t a life commitment—pick the one that seems promising, but after a year or two you should do your search again. Especially in early years, changing jobs is likely a much faster path to promotion (and actual growth in understanding how different places do things) than staying at one place.
The software engineering ladder is wider, not taller, than Data Scientist—DS roles typically specialize to a domain earlier than SDE, and the variance in pay across companies and specialties shows more for DS than SDE. Data Engineer usually implies a bit less independence and more well-defined problems, and pays a bit less overall.
The good meta-advice is to spend some effort thinking about your comparative advantage(s), and to recognize that taking a job isn’t a life commitment—pick the one that seems promising, but after a year or two you should do your search again. Especially in early years, changing jobs is likely a much faster path to promotion (and actual growth in understanding how different places do things) than staying at one place.