5 Great Careers That Won't Ruin Your Social Life

everyone wants a bit of work-life balance, right? studies show that employees who are able to disconnect from their job and maintain time for themselves are typically more satisfied and productive when they're at work. so if you’re currently in a job where you feel like things are unbalanced, what are your options? glassdoor has compiled a list of the most work-life-balance-friendly jobs. the top five:

1. data scientist

data scientists are very 21st century creatures: they take data from a variety of raw sources and look for patterns, trends, conclusions, etc. it’s a pretty specialized field, with a strong background in analytics, statistics, math, and computer science usually required. once you have the training, though, the pay is high ($114,808) and the number of openings is growing all the time as companies want real-time analytics. data scientists already in the field rated their job as “very satisfying” in glassdoor’s survey.

2. seo manager

if you’ve ever noticed the ranking of search results when you google something, you’ve seen the handiwork of an seo manager. these professionals analyze web traffic data and try to architect new ways to push their content to the forefront of people’s web searches. the median salary is $45,720, and this is another tech career that will be growing and evolving for the foreseeable future. current seo managers were in the satisfied to very satisfied range with their work-life balance.

3. talent acquisition specialist

a company is only as good as the people it hires, and that makes talent acquisition a top priority. finding and recruiting top candidates falls to the talent acquisition specialist, who can go out and meet a company’s staffing needs using expertise and extensive outreach to find just the right people. with a median salary of $63,504 and a “satisfied” rating on the survey, who better to help others find work-life balance than a professional who’s found it in their own work?

4. social media manager

being a company’s brand ambassador seems like it would be a round-the-clock job. (am i the only one who imagines someone huddled over twitter in the wee hours of the morning?) however, this is not the case—social media managers fall into the range of satisfied to very satisfied with work-life balance, possibly due to the portability of their work (social media can go wherever you go, after all). the median salary for social media managers is $40,000.

5. substitute teacher

if you’re interested in a career in education but don’t think that a full-time teaching schedule is for you, becoming a substitute teacher might give you the balanced schedule you need. the salary isn’t as high as some others at the top of the list ($24,380), but the job received high marks on the “satisfied” spectrum for the flexibility involved.