Follow up to my earlier post. I know the manager of a team who is currently hiring for a Data Scientist position. I asked him specifically if the Masters degree was a hard requirement, he replied that "the masters is a hard requirement per upper management".
So I don't think "Kaggle Master" is going to substitute for a University Master's degree, in this case.
Yeah I mean I think it also depends a lot on the company. If OP mostly wants to work at big companies, having a MS is useful because corporations love credentials (not a knock against them, its generally just the truth).
Startups / medium sized companies in general are okay with lots of projects, experience, etc. They love self starters. Even if an MS is required, if you have some cool iPython notebooks / blog posts on explaining / implementing grad-student-level algorithms and concepts then often that's enough :)
Oh cmon, we are all data literate here, I wouldn't generalize about all upper management everywhere. These are probably just more traditional mega corps where credentials are important because it's a filter for them. But regardless, there's tons of companies that have dropped the graduate degree requirement, instead making it preferred, or just an 'or'
