I have been a Data Scientist for almost a decade now. I pivoted my career into it after working as a chemist / software tester. I got my work to pay for me to complete a three year Master Program after which they gave me the title which allowed me to jump to other companies when I wanted more money. So it can be done and I am glad that I did it.

However, I stared my program in 2015 when Data Science was HOT. Now I mostly see Data Scientist being promoted in place from data analysis or other related careers. You only really get hired at another company if have 5+ years of experience. So if you really want to do this you will need your company to promote you and train you in place. There’s a huge pool of people looking to get into it right now. Most of which did a coding bootcamp to upskill so those are mostly useless. They only really work for people with a PhD in some technical field where they learned a few tricks to get business knowledge instead of their academic data skills.