Considering Data Science as your next career move, but you’re still unsure? We’ve answered the following questions to help with your decision:
What does a Data Scientist do?
Luis Voloch, ITC’s Data Science Tech Lead eloquently explains that “a data scientist is able to integrate and clean data, understand the business challenges around these data, create analytical solutions for these challenges, and communicate with the relevant counterparts in the company throughout the whole process“.
Data Scientists can also use data to advise executives and managers on decision-making and implications for processes and products. They use online experiments, build machine learning pipelines and personalized data products to better understand their business and customers, and ultimately achieving sustainable growth. Data Science can be applied a wide domain of industries, and therefore their skills can be applied in fields and areas that spark their own passions and personal interests.
What skills do data scientists need?
In order to make a career change into data science, you will need the relevant hard skills, including a solid understanding of open-source programming languages such as Python, and the ability to effectively utilize the latest big data processing tools. Along with the technical skills needed, a common dominant trait among data scientists is a growing curiosity, critical thinking and problem solving skills. In other words, a strong desire to delve beneath the surface of a problem, explore the relevant questions, and distill them into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.
Today, Data Scientists are seen as hybrids of data hackers, communicators, decision-makers and transforming technology as we know it. Shay Palachy, a Data Science Consultant and the co-founder of the DataHack community for the promotion of Data Science in Israel, tells us more on what a Data Scientist needs to know. “A data scientist needs to know two main things.
The first is how to translate real life problems – business, engineering or other – into a modeled problem framework from one of the various sciences (most commonly mathematics and computer science, but also physics, biology, etc.) which can capture problem complexity to a good degree.
The second is how to transform and fine-tune both the input data and the problem framework to arrive at scientifically-valid and useful results. These two skills require a deep understanding of both the problem frameworks and the data in use (probability and statistics are crucial for the latter). Of course, the data scientist must also have the tools to perform said translations and transformations with (usually, any popular programming language will do) and the ability to communicate his work to his peers or clients.”
Data scientists are in demand in all industries
As a data scientist, one of the greatest advantages is being able to work in almost every industry (medical, financial, marketing, agriculture, insurance etc). This gives you the opportunity to find your passion and make your mark in the data science landscape. Additionally, with the demand for data scientists, you have a wide range of options to explore where your passion lies. Data Science is still a relatively new field in the tech world. The demand for data scientists is becoming a serious constraint in some sectors. In Israel, in particular, there is a shortage of 10,000+ talented computer science professionals.
The paycheck is attractive
A career in Data Science provides job security, and is said to offer the trio of high demand, high salaries and high job satisfaction. Entry level Data scientists typically earn over 20,000 NIS ($95,000), and that’s just for entry-level.
Solving real problems
While using your technical skills and finding your passion in the field, you will be able to work on projects that address real issues to people and companies. Predictions, targeting, patterns, optimizing processes, understanding and using data efficiently are all part of the challenges data scientists face. You can check out the amazing and different types of projects based on machine learning and computer vision that our recent cohort of Fellows did in top companies in Israel here.
In other words: your job prospects as a graduate are excellent. Data Science is currently ranked one of the most promising jobs, and the demand for talented data scientists is growing exponentially. With ITC, you can integrate the field in just 5 months of training and get real, hands’-on experience in the field with projects with our partner companies, followed by paid internships in those leading companies. Many people view internships as a path to their future job, and they can be if you impress your employers enough. Switching to a career in data science can be challenging, however, as long as you keep your goals in sight and drive your determination to success, you will reap the rewards that await you.