What is a Data Scientist?

Data scientists are a mix of mathematicians, trend-spotters, and computer scientists. The data scientist’s role is to decipher large volumes of data and carry out further analysis to find trends in the data and gain a deeper insight into what it all means. Data scientists operate between the business and IT worlds and drive industries by analyzing complex datasets to tease out insights that companies can leverage into actions.

What Data Science Roles are Out There?

Just to name a few, some of the most common job titles for data scientists include:

Business Intelligence Analyst

A BI analyst uses data to help figure out market and business trends by analyzing data to develop a clearer picture of where the company stands.

Data Mining Engineer

The data mining engineer examines not only the data for their own business but also that of third parties. In addition to analyzing data, a data mining engineer will create sophisticated algorithms to help analyze the data further.

Data Architect

Data architects work closely with users, system designers, and developers to create blueprints that data management systems use to centralize, integrate, maintain, and protect data sources.

Data Scientist

Data scientists begin by translating a business case into an analytics agenda, developing hypotheses, and understanding data—as well as exploring patterns to measure what impact they will have on businesses. They also find and choose algorithms to help further analyze data. They use business analytics to not only explain what effect the data is going to have on a company in the future but can also help devise solutions that will help the company to move forward.

Senior Data Scientist

A senior data scientist can anticipate what a business’s future needs will be. Apart from gathering data, they also analyze it thoroughly in order to resolve highly complex business problems efficiently. Through their experience, they can not only design but drive forward the creation of new standards, as well as create ways to use statistical data, and also develop tools to help further analyze the data.

What Skills Do I Need?

If you’ve been wondering how to start a career in data science, you’ll need hard skills like analysis, machine learning, statistics, Hadoop, etc., but you’ll also excel in this type of role if you excel at critical thinking, persuasive communications, and are a great listener and problem solver. You’ll also need data science training, of course; download our free eBook Top Programming Languages for a Data Scientist to learn more.

This is an industry where opportunities are plenty, so once you have the education and qualifications, the jobs are waiting for you—now and in the future.

What’s the Job Market for Data Scientists Like?

With millions of worldwide job openings in Big Data, the role of a data scientist has become the hottest job of the decade. In today’s data-based world, companies are using the insights that data scientists provide to stay one step ahead of their competition while keeping overhead costs low. Big names like Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Booz Allen Hamilton, State Farm, Walmart, and more all regularly have job postings for data scientists.

What’s the Career Outlook for a Data Scientist?

With the right qualifications, you’ll enjoy a bright career outlook as a data scientist. The demand for individuals with these skills will continue to increase, and those already in data science roles are sure to see their salaries increase in the future. As demand for skilled professionals to fill these positions increases, the salaries offered are also likely to increase—even those holding the lowest-paying data scientist jobs will still make a nice living: salaries range from $60,000 and up.

Median Salaries for Jobs Related to Data Science (Source: www.payscale.com)

Is it hard to find a job as a data scientist?

The supply of data science postings grew by 31% over the past few years, while data science job searches only rose by 14% over the same period. This high demand has led to a shortage of over 150,000 data science professionals.

Given the supply and demand imbalance and the skyrocketing growth of the field, the data science market is one of the hottest for jobseekers, with many companies continuing to hire under uncertain market conditions. 

Data science expertise is highly sought-after because it leads to tangible and measurable business outcomes. As stated in Harvard Business Review, “Companies in the top third of their industry in the use of data-driven decision making were, on average, 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than their competitors.”  

A data science career path is not for the faint of heart, but sure to satiate the curiosity of those who value continuous learning and a growth mindset.

These courses allow you to gain in-depth knowledge about the most modern skills and technologies that data scientists use, such as Tableau, Hadoop, R, SAS, Python, machine learning, and more.

Is data science the right career for you?

Certybox offers a comprehensive Masters in data science with Project. You’ll work to learn about data science, data wrangling, machine learning, and Python—and finish it all off with a portfolio-worthy capstone project.