Personal Finance Canada

Few things: your pay is low for your experience and education. You're also not using your skills, so I think you can do much much better at a new job (looking at $130k salary min).

That offer sounds more reasonable, but please share more details about why you're self employed. Is this a contracting role for a US firm, in which case I think your pay could be higher. Is it limited contract?

You probably shouldn't incorporate, it's expensive and doesn't help your tax situation at all. You're better off being sole proprietor. Double check with an accountant to be sure (should be answerable for your situation in a 30 min call). The other advice on overhead is good. For taxes you need to be aware that even as a contractor the CRA may decide you're an employee and go after you and your employer for CPP.

In addition, depending on the company and contract you will want to buy professional liability insurance. PIPEDA, GDPR, and CCPA are serious business, make sure you're not exposed to liability through your services, which is why you should look at insurance (friend on the role).

Next I would dig a little deeper on kick starting their DS capabilities from scratch. That's a tough gig, I've done it a couple of times and it can be fun or horrible. It's going to be a lot of selling data science to teams you need to work with, they won't always want to make time for you, so be ready for that.

Think about how much support you'll have, do they have a data warehouse, any infrastructure, or an existing analytics team? If so, you're good to do DS, if not, you're going to need to build a lot of tooling and reporting before you do much DS work. Personally I love that stuff, but it's technical work.

You'll also have to demonstrate value, so how are they expecting you to do that? Do you build data products, do you do product analytics, ML? It's important to scope that out and set those expectations with your boss, that will help make sure you're successful. Always always always make sure your boss knows why you're valuable and why they're cutting you your paycheque.

Edit: I missed the part about 12 month contract. You should have the best tax liability as sole prop contractor.