![[Featured image] A computational scientist conducts research on a computer in a lab.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/7jf21ABYYjujZVcxbIhDlT/d96e6f6ecaf9a88abc4648f41382b0b4/GettyImages-1264101225.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
What Does a Computational Scientist Do? 2026 Career Guide
Computational science is an in-demand and growing field. Learn more about what it’s like to be a computational scientist, including what to expect from computational scientist jobs and the average computational scientist salary.
March 22, 2024
Article

![[Featured Image] A programmer explores R packages while he sits at his computer in his office.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/6jJHzhXKKDsh8cCgtp6dnP/e355f89fa957d1381fc53c175620f5bd/GettyImages-1167494087.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A business professional software developer sitting at a desk using three computer monitors to write Python code.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/1LHEHFKBIOkzfEV47rBMFA/b6e1dc420f54e1d13825b5563e735039/GettyImages-1646501095.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)



![[Featured Image] A businesswoman sits at a laptop and works on an app that utilizes entity extraction and NLP.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/6h8myBI6AMvErUW97iumKc/46b7d2772445ecacd7f3353dc1f5f092/GettyImages-174163258.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A group of AI professionals meet in an office to discuss how they can apply transfer learning to their project.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/5CqIkCal67NTYZvUpF8JCi/e7f6bbe583c83951cacc396b7d231d5f/GettyImages-504830994.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A scientist working in a lab uses a tablet to look over synthetic data.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/1n25AsrflAmCzAsiMFIkSp/dce2b3df8bbf46668225b2ce5e53c1f0/GettyImages-1441662923.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] Two data scientists discuss the 5 Vs of big data.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/23Hqt9chGjaHx89UjCWOd7/434c88d6084f7dc1cfce592b265881e2/GettyImages-1393600826.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A student takes an online course in which she'll learn about various AI programming languages, like Python and Java, on their laptop from home.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/23yvQasikMfhshd7czMfhv/11b33229b189c982605e47ff132186e9/GettyImages-1452573663.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A data consultant makes strategic recommendations to their colleagues.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/1QuXCVv1qBhvNOTusDbKBb/67c747e7fa1e594df13cd91b78938812/GettyImages-1475751361.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] A person is using AI video editing tools while sitting at a wooden desk with a video camera in hand.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/5ebCJpYzKX4XtfZm7PjyyL/03437d29719a825d5632717373e4d860/GettyImages-1218118094.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] An employee works on a laptop and uses cross validation in machine learning to evaluate a data model's performance.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/2l8XVPTF2ddaZSqf1u3C0M/2b15fc78abf0a49922265c6bf7868253/GettyImages-648950412.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
![[Featured Image] Two colleagues discuss transfer learning from large language models during a video chat.](https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/1HnblqA177Yyv8vjUKOzNW/6aedbad6c7532a31714a971adcaab68d/GettyImages-612854864.jpg?w=330&h=216&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive)
