Is Data, Analytics & AI a Good Job Market in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: Medium

Denver is still a viable market for Data, Analytics & AI, but it is not an easy one. Local unemployment was 3.9% in June 2026, Denver's latest official data scientist benchmark shows about 4,510 workers with mean pay of $125,040, and Colorado-level category postings were up 20.7% year over year even as category employment was down 1.1%.[9][10][24][23] That mix usually means real openings exist, but employers are filling them selectively and leaning toward candidates who can contribute quickly.

Best positioned: Your odds are best if you already have Python and SQL fluency, some machine-learning or dashboarding depth, and are open to hybrid work with defense, healthcare, government, or consulting employers.[3][1][4]

Main caution: The biggest mistake is reading Denver's pay upside as broad access: only about 20% of observed postings are entry-level and only about 15% are remote.[1][2]

What Changed Recently

• Colorado's category-level picture split in July 2026: data, analytics & AI employment was down 1.1% year over year, while active postings were up 20.7%.[23][24]: That usually points to selective hiring, backfills, and slower headcount conversion rather than a simple hiring boom.
• Denver's recent hiring sample covered more than 150 postings across more than 75 companies over the last 90 days, with a fragmented employer base rather than one dominant hirer.[17][28]: You have multiple employer entry points, but targeted applications matter more than mass applying.
• Mid and senior roles continue to dominate the sample: about 40% of postings are mid-level, about 30% are senior, and only about 20% are entry-level.[2]: New grads and career switchers need proof-of-work and domain fit, not just coursework.
• Nationally, total nonfarm employment reached 158,858 thousand in July 2026, up 0.1993% year over year, while U.S. job openings were 7,359 thousand in June with a 4.4% openings rate.[19][20][21]: The broader labor market is still expanding, but slowly, so Denver analytics hiring can stay active while interview funnels remain selective.
• July brought local layoff noise as Public Storage reported 68 affected employees in Greenwood Village and TIAA filed a Denver office reduction effective July 31, 2026.[29][30]: These notices are not a verdict on the whole category, but they do raise the value of targeting diversified employers and transferable analytical domains.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: High for pure entry-level paths because only about 20% of observed postings are entry roles, and remote openings are a small minority.[1][2]

Best target: Hybrid analyst roles in healthcare, government, or consulting that visibly use Python, SQL, Tableau, and data visualization.[3][1][4]

Biggest mistake: Competing only for remote generalist analyst jobs without a portfolio that proves business impact.[1]

Next step: Build one portfolio project that answers a business question end to end, publish the code and dashboard, and tailor every application to one domain instead of applying as a generic analyst.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate but competitive; Denver has a real mid-level lane, with about 40% mid and about 30% senior postings in the recent sample.[2]

Best target: Enterprise and consulting roles, plus defense and public-sector analytics, where Python, SQL, machine learning, and cloud data tools show up together.[5][3][4][6]

Biggest mistake: Presenting as a tool user instead of tying your work to risk, operations, healthcare, or mission outcomes.

Next step: Create two resume versions: one for stakeholder-heavy analytics roles and one for technical analytics or ML roles, each with quantified outcomes and a clear domain story.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: High unless you can map prior industry experience into regulated or operational analytics work.[3][7]

Best target: Compliance or AML analytics, healthcare analytics, or reporting-heavy analyst roles where domain knowledge can offset less formal analytics experience.[3][7]

Biggest mistake: Leading with certificates alone when employers mostly want a bachelor's baseline and evidence you can work with real datasets and stakeholders.[8]

Next step: Translate your past work into metrics, dashboards, forecasting, or process-improvement examples, then package that into a small domain-specific case study.

Salary Reality

high pay highly concentrated

The cleanest local benchmark is the BLS data scientist figure: mean pay of $125,040 in the metro, with about 4,510 workers and concentration roughly in line with the U.S. average.[10] For data analyst titles, private trackers cluster lower and wider: Levels.fyi shows $91,000 median total compensation with a $87,000 to $143,000 middle range, Hyring reports a $102,620 median, and ReadySetHire shows about $82,464 average pay.[14][15][16]

Denver can pay well for analytic talent, but the premium is not pure upside because Denver's cost-of-living index is 128.7 and Colorado's mean offered salary on new data, analytics & AI openings was ~$115,985 in July 2026 (n=1,762).[34][35]

The best-paying slice is smaller and more selective because only about 20% of observed postings are entry-level, most roles are on-site or hybrid, and bachelor's degrees are the default credential in about 70% of postings that list education.[1][2][8]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in senior data science, ML, and analytics-heavy enterprise roles, with local posted salary ranges centering on about $108k to $159k and some recent Built In listings showing bands up to 120K-160K.[26][7]

Caution: Do not anchor on the top end alone: those figures come from posted ranges or salary aggregators, and they can overrepresent senior, brand-name, or hard-to-fill roles.[26][7][14][16]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Opportunities are not evenly spread across the category. In the recent sample, aerospace & defense accounts for about 20% of postings, government & public sector about 15%, hospitals and health care about 15%, and professional services / consulting about 10%.[3] Enterprise employers make up about 35% of postings, and the most consistently active named employers include CACI, Deloitte, Ernst & Young LLP, Slalom, and Matricstek Inc.[18][5] That mix favors candidates who can apply analytics to regulated, operational, or client-facing problems rather than only build models in isolation. The market is also fragmented rather than dominated by one company, and active postings have typically been open around 34 days, which suggests a steady but selective replacement cycle.[28][33] Local spot checks also show demand for compliance and AML analytics plus hybrid senior analyst work, reinforcing that domain context matters almost as much as tooling.[7][6]

• Defense and public-sector analytics (high): Aerospace & defense accounts for about 20% of local postings and government & public sector about 15%, with named activity from CACI and other enterprise employers.[18][5][3]
• Healthcare and regulated analytics (high): Hospitals and health care represent about 15% of the sample, and recent local examples include compliance and AML analytics, which favors candidates who can work with sensitive or regulated data.[3][7]
• Consulting and client-delivery analytics (moderate): Professional services / consulting makes up about 10% of postings, with Deloitte, Ernst & Young LLP, and Slalom among the active names.[18][3]

Where to focus: Aim first at hybrid mid-career roles in defense, healthcare, government, and consulting where you can connect Python and SQL work to a business, mission, or compliance outcome.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Python (table stakes): Python appears in about 75% of observed postings, making it the closest thing to a default technical screen in this market.[4]
• SQL (table stakes): SQL shows up in about 50% of postings and also appears in current local role examples, so it is the common language across analyst, BI, and analytics-engineering work.[4][6]
• Machine learning (differentiator): Machine learning appears in about 30% of local postings and is part of the better-paid technical end of the category.[4][26]
• Tableau and data visualization (table stakes): Tableau appears in about 20% of postings and data visualization in about 15%, which makes presentation and dashboard fluency valuable even in technical roles.[4]
• AWS, BigQuery, and modern data-stack tools (differentiator): AWS appears in about 15% of local postings, and current local examples highlight BigQuery and MongoDB alongside Python, SQL, and R.[4][6]
• TS/SCI with polygraph (premium): Only about 5% of postings explicitly require this clearance, but the local industry mix leans toward aerospace, defense, and government work, so it can open a smaller but advantaged hiring lane.[3][27]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Compliance / AML analyst (both): Local listings include senior compliance and AML analytics work, so SQL-heavy analytical candidates can shift toward risk, fraud, or monitoring teams.[7]
• Marketing analytics / media optimization manager (pivot): Local listings also include marketing and media optimization analytics, which is a nearby path if your strength is experimentation, attribution, and growth reporting rather than model development.[7]
• Cleared mission or intelligence analyst (pivot): Aerospace & defense plus government & public sector account for about 35% of the local sample, and some postings ask for TS/SCI with polygraph.[3][27]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two versions: one for stakeholder-facing analyst work and one for technical data science or ML work.
• Publish one portfolio piece that includes data cleaning, SQL analysis, a Python notebook, and a decision-ready dashboard.
• Build a target list of Denver employers in defense, healthcare, consulting, and public-sector analytics, then map your past work to each domain.
• Stop applying to remote-only roles first; prioritize hybrid roles where your response rate is likely to be higher.

Days 31-60

• Add one domain case study in either healthcare, compliance, or operations and make it the centerpiece of outreach.
• Practice live SQL and Python screening under time pressure, including business-logic explanation rather than code only.
• Rewrite LinkedIn and resume bullets to show measurable outcomes, not tools used.
• Ask for informational conversations with analysts or managers at firms on your target list and bring a relevant work sample.

Days 61-90

• Broaden your search into adjacent paths such as compliance analytics or cleared mission analysis if interviews are not converting.
• Use posted ranges to set salary floors and trade pay against commute, hybrid expectations, and domain fit.
• If you are missing cloud or ML depth, complete one project using BigQuery or AWS and one using a simple applied model, then repackage both for applications.
• Review your funnel by segment, not just by title, and double down on the domain where callbacks are strongest.

Methodology and Confidence

This July 2026 report was generated on August 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: July 2026. Latest direct Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO data: July 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. The market call leans on direct local wage and unemployment data, then uses salary and posting patterns as directional support.

Limitations

• The freshest direct metro context is June 2026 unemployment data, but the most specific official occupation pay and employment benchmark available here for Denver data scientists is the BLS May 2025 wage release, so fast changes since then may not fully show up yet.[9][10]
• This category is broader than the single data scientist row visible in the local BLS material, so conditions for BI analysts, analytics engineers, ML engineers, and decision scientists are inferred partly from newer hiring and salary signals rather than one official metro occupation table.[10]
• Some June 2026 state labor-force and employment figures are preliminary and may later be revised, so small month-to-month changes should be read cautiously.[11][12][13]
• Salary estimates for data analyst titles vary across private trackers in Denver—from about $82,464 on one site to $91,000 total compensation on another and $102,620 median on another—so non-government pay figures are best treated as directional, not exact.[14][15][16]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is more reliable for reading skill patterns, leading employer names, and work-arrangement mix than for exact counts or exact market share.[17][18][1][4]

References

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6. Builtincolorado. Best Data & Analytics Jobs in Denver & Boulder, CO 2026 | Built In Colorado · 2026-08 · builtincolorado.com
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8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
9. Stlouisfed. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · 2026-07 · stlouisfed.org
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Denver-Aurora-Centennial — May 2025 · 2026-03 · bls.gov
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
13. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
14. Levels. Levels - median_wage_annual · 2026-06 · levels.fyi
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16. Readysethire. Data Analyst Salaries & Top Paying Companies in Denver, CO | Jul 10, 2026 · 2026-08 · readysethire.com
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20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
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22. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
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29. Warntracker. Live Layoffs from Public WARN records - WARNTracker.com · 2026-07 · warntracker.com
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34. Denverrelocationguide. Home - Denver Relocation Guide · 2026-01 · denverrelocationguide.com
35. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Data, Analytics & AI openings in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Data, Analytics & AI openings in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO.