[nnopepe]

I am unfamiliar with scala, which of it's traits makes it deserving of higher pay?

[lmm]

It's popular in finance, which pulls up the average pay.

[agravier]

Also in all sorts of data engineering, productionized data science, etc.

[jlund-molfese]

Functional languages seem to have a smaller talent pool and higher salaries.

You can write procedural Scala, but if that’s the case, you might as well use modern Java.

[fazfq]

I guess the fact that it's rarer than other languages, but I have no idea.

[texasbigdata]

Just a guess: perhaps that it’s more applicable to large use cases and at clients that are much more likely to be profitable and therefore able to pay?

[jon-wood]

Scala is big in the financial sector, which means average salaries for Scala developers are going to trend higher.