How to break into the field of Data Science

Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash

Introduction

As one of the most exciting fields in the recent years, many people are looking for the right path to break into data science and machine learning. Using a data-driven approach, I decided to dig deeper to uncover the answers to the most common questions. I analyzed data obtained from Glassdoor to answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are the top industries hiring data professionals

To answer my question, I grouped the data by sector and visualized the top 10 sectors that has posted jobs for data professionals.

The result matched my expectations, where the information technology sector is the one most in demand for data professionals.

2. What tools are the most important to learn

Another question in which there is a lot of debate around is which tools should you learn to land a data job. Many people are learning tens of new tools and technologies to keep up with the rapid advancement in this field.

I decided to classify the job posting for senior positions by adding a new feature. Afterwards I created a pie chart to see which technology is most in demand for senior positions only.

The chart above shows us that knowledge of Python programming language is the most in demand skill for senior job positions. The second top skill is Excel, which many people nowadays underestimate as a powerful tool to analyze data.

3. Which data role has the highest salary

Finally, I wondered which job title in the field of data science had the highest salary. In order to take a closer look at this, I classified the job postings into a uniform job title naming convention, and I represented my findings in a bar chart.

Here, we can see that Machine Learning Engineers, Data Architects and Data Scientists are the highest paid data professionals in the market.

Conclusion

In this article, we took a close look at the job postings from Glassdoor hiring for data science professionals.

1. We learned that information technology, biotech & pharmaceuticals and business services are the top sectors hiring.
2. We looked at the different tools and technologies most in demand to land a job in the field. This showed that Python is the most needed language, and we also learned that Excel is still relevant even with all the new tools emerging lately.
3. Finally, we looked at the highest paid job titles. We found that machine learning engineers are the most paid professionals. While data architects and data scientist followed.

To see more about this analysis, the link to my Github is available here.