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 :)
