Why Should You opt Data Science as a Career?
Data science is not the future; it is the present! Data science has been here since the 1990s, but its value was recognized only when businesses became unable to use the humongous volumes of data for decision-making. Data science has been helping businesses to grow beyond the conventional norms of data consolidation. It enables the organizations to have access to more and more information and allows seeing new things in a better way, from a different perspective.
Data Science is predicted to grow over the next decade. It is a staggering fact that over 90% of the data in the world was generated in just 2 years. It is unimaginable to realize the amount of data that will be generated in the next decade. The demand for data scientists will rise by 36% by 2022 alone.
But this data often just stays stored in databases and data lakes, basically untouched. The vast amount of data collected and stored by these technologies can generate transformative benefits for organizations and societies around the world, but only if we know how to interpret it. That's where data science comes in.
More and more industries are becoming data-hungry and they need data to hold specialized data scientists who can craft products for the customers. About 11.5 million jobs will be created by 2026 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Organizations are picking up the nuggets of wisdom and are explicitly leveraging data science to convert information and knowledge into action, thereby leading to more and more data scientist jobs.
The rise in demand for data scientists will prompt educational institutes to include it in their curricula. Data literacy will increase in the future and a data scientist will have a specialized holding, pretty much like a doctor or a lawyer. That is, he/she will be part of an entirely new discipline in itself. Recently, many universities have released data science degrees that will bridge the skill gap in the industries.
Since the field of data science in itself is young, data scientists do not hold years of experience behind them, as compared to other IT-related field.
In the next decade, data scientists will see a much greater distinction between Senior Data Scientists and other positions. As a result, there will be a much more defined hierarchy of data scientists.
What is a Data Scientist?
Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. A data scientist applies the same principle to data.
Data Science is the domain to deal with huge volumes of data and create automated ways to gain knowledge and insights from that data.
The purpose of Data Scientists is to extract, pre-process and analyze data. Through this, companies can make better decisions. Various companies have their own requirements and use data accordingly. In the end, the goal of a Data Scientist is to make businesses grow better.
Data Science gives meaning to raw data and converts it into meaningful insights that can be used to grow the business and recognize market trends. With so less supply of specialized Data Scientists and a rapid demand, Data Science has become a lucrative career.
A data scientist is a trend spotter in data who with the help of applied mathematics and computer science knowledge extracts meaningful insights from data.
Data scientists acquire and analyze enormous sets of organized and unstructured data. A data scientist’s job entails a mix of computer science, statistics, and mathematics. They interpret the outcomes of data analysis, processing, and modeling to generate actionable plans for businesses and other organizations.
Data scientists are analytic professionals that use their knowledge of technology and social science to identify patterns and handle data. They identify solutions to corporate difficulties by combining industry knowledge, contextual insight, and skepticism of established assumptions.
As a result, data scientists are a mix of computer scientists, mathematicians, and trend analysts. Data scientist salaries in India are among the highest due to great demand.
A data scientist’s job entails deciphering complex, unstructured data from sources like smart devices, social media feeds, and emails that don’t fit neatly into a database.
Top 5 Reasons To choose Data Science as a career
1) The importance of data science
As I mentioned before, The purpose of Data Scientists is to extract, pre-process and analyze data. Through this, companies can make better decisions. Various companies have their requirements and use data accordingly. In the end, the goal of a Data Scientist is to make businesses grow better.
Data being the most valuable asset to a company, Data Scientists, with their ability to gain insights from big data, play a very important role. they serve as a trusted adviser and strategic partner to their management.
With the insights from data scientists, companies make decisions like inventory management, supply-chain management, customer retention, and much more. Applications are huge and so is the importance of these decisions.
2) This Career is always in demand!
Data is the new oil. The only difference between oil and data is – oil fields are diminishing but data is growing. The demand is growing rapidly and will keep on growing as data volumes increase. Traditional computer science cannot process, analyze and gain insights from this big data. Data scientists are needed and will be needed in the future as well.
Today Data Scientists are being hired by companies from almost every field many start-ups are relying on Data Science to go ahead.
3) The Pay and The Perks will Excite you!
As organizations are turning toward Machine Learning, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence, the demand for data science roles is seeing a sustained and accelerating upward surge. Since 2012, the Data Science sector has witnessed a massive hike of 650%, far outpacing other sectors.
Therefore, transitioning to data science is a smart move as it fetches far higher comparative returns. For instance, transitioning from a marketing analytics job to a data science job leads to a 37% salary growth on average.
According to leading freelancing site toogit.com, data science professionals with 3-10 years of experience get paid in the range of 20-50$/hour, while those with more experience can command up to 100$/hour.
4) A Field that is Changing Present and Redefines future
Netflix and Amazon are some of the top companies whose business is thriving because of one of the use cases of data science – the recommender system.
Data science has proven its worth in medical, law, manufacturing, banking, and finance. It is changing the present.
With more data scientists on board, more data, and continuous improvements to its applications, data science is bound to redefine the future as well.
5) Variety of Training Options Available
A good data scientist doesn’t have to be necessarily an engineer. Anyone with computer science, mathematics, and an eye to recognize data trends can become a data scientist.
Fortunately, if you are not coming from an engineering background, you can train yourself easily using online material. Start with beginner tutorials on YouTube and slowly move your way up by signing up with courses on Coursera, Edureka, and similar sites.
We find explanations by Andrew ng very interesting and insightful.
If you want more interactive training options, you can opt for offline courses as well.
Job Roles in Data Science
Data scientist
A data scientist job is probably one of the hottest jobs. As a data scientist, you have to understand the challenges of business and offer the best solutions using data analysis and data processing solutions. In addition, companies often hire data scientists to research and develop new algorithms and approaches.
Average salary: $121,674 in the United States & INR 10,80,000 in India
Skills: Distributed computing, Predictive modeling, Story-telling and visualizing, Math, and Stats
Languages: SAS, R, MatLab, SQL, Python, Hive, Pig, Spark
Data analyst
In your job search you may also come across the role of a data analyst. Data scientists and data analytics, and somewhat sometimes overlapped a company that hires you, and if most of your work is data analytics, you're called a "data scientist."
Data analysts are responsible for various tasks such as data visualization, transformation, and manipulation.
Average salary: $75,068 in the United States & INR 6,00,000 in India
Skills: Spreadsheet tools, Database system, Communication and visualization, Math and Stats
Languages: R, Python, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, and C/C++ are elementary
Data architect
With the rise of Big Data, the importance of the data architect's job is increasing rapidly. People in this role create plans for the data management system to integrate, centralize, protect, and maintain data sources.
Average salary: $143,574 in United States & INR 17,22,000 in India
Skills: Data warehousing solution, Database architect knowledge, ETL and Spreadsheet, Data modeling, System development
Languages: SQL, XML, Hive, Pig, Spark
Data engineer
Data engineer's job is to keep the ecosystem and the pipeline optimized and efficient to ensure the data is available for data scientists and analysts to use at any moment.
Average salary: $129,609 in the United States & INR 8,10,000 in India
Skills: Database system, Data modeling, and ETL tools, Data APIs, Data warehousing solutions
Languages: SQL, Hive, Pig, R, MatLab, SAS, SPSS, Python, Java, Ruby, Perl
Machine learning engineer
The machine learning engineer job role requires researching new approaches to data manipulation to design new algorithms.
Average salary: $127,327 in the United States & INR 7,30,000 in India
Skills: Applied Mathematics, Computer Science Fundamentals, and Programming, Machine Learning Algorithms, Data Modelling and Evaluation, Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing
Languages: Java, Python, JavaScript, SQL, REST APIs
Business analyst
Business analyst responsible for designing strategies that allow businesses to find the information they need to make decisions quickly and efficiently.
Average salary: $78,708 per year in the United States & INR 7,50,000 in India
Skills: Basic MS Office tools, Data visualization tools, Business intelligence understanding, Data modeling, Analytical thinking, and problem-solving
Languages: SQL
Hot Data Science Skills
Below is a visualization of high level description of skills needed to become a data scientist.
Coding skills clubbed with knowledge of statistics and the ability to think critically, make up the arsenal of a successful data scientist. Some of the in-demand Data Scientist skills that will fetch big career opportunities in Data Science are:
Programming Languages: R/Python/Java
Statistics and Applied Mathematics
Working Knowledge of Hadoop and Spark
Databases: SQL and NoSQL
Machine Learning and Neural Networks
Proficiency in Deep Learning Frameworks: TensorFlow, Keras, Pytorch
Creative Thinking & Industry Knowledge
So, this was all about Data Science Jobs Trend for the future. We now know how data science will transform the future. Also, we discussed how in 2026, the number of positions for data scientists will increase. Hope this article gives you a complete idea of data science job trends for the upcoming future.
Last Modified: May 16, 2022