How to Become a Data Scientist – A Complete Guide

In this article, we will discuss how to become a data scientist and for that what qualification and skills required as well as their job profile, salary, top industries which hires, and online course providers of data science.

We are sure that after reading this article we will have a complete idea about data scientist jobs.

What is Data Science?

Data science is a field where an individual uses multiple but interrelated academic disciplines such as computer science, mathematics, statistics principles, analytics, data visualization, and programming to pull out knowledge and insightful data from various available scattered data to provide the solution.

The individual who is qualified or skilled to work on such data to provide solutions is called a Data Scientist.

The data scientists use various scientific methods, principles, and systems to show the outcome of such analysis to solve problems.  They uses structural as well as unstructured data for analysis.

In a more simple word, data science is all about applying multiple methods on some available data to take out very deep insightful data that can solve current as well as future problems. The data science mainly helps to make predictions based on data and look for solutions.

I hope now you have some idea about Data Science & Data Scientist.

There is a difference between Data Scientist vs. Data Analyst

1. Data scientists and Data analysts both are involved in big data analysis but there is a difference in their leadership part. Where Data scientists provide solutions and proceed to solve them himself/herself whereas data analysts also provide a solution but he/she pursues a solution under guidance.
2. Data scientist creates new processes and systems whereas Data analytics use existing one.
3. Data analytics need some extra skills to become a Data Scientist.

Let’s start to understand the Data Science career…

A career in Data Science: 

This field is growing for the last 3-4 years like anything. A data scientist is a job critical job in this era of data. These people are multi-talented and having knowledge of various skills like from Database Management to Machine Learning.

A career as a data scientist is ranked at the top 5 jobs in many countries for 2020 by LinkedIn. Data science has topped the Emerging Jobs list for the last three years continuously. The significance of data science is growing in all industries across the world.

Data science is an evolution or upgraded version of previous jobs like a statistician. It has increased the importance of data in academic research.

The federal government of the United States of America (the USA is one of the largest employers in the world, which employs approx. 26% of the total data scientist.

The data scientists are mainly employed in R&D Labs, computer system Development Companies, and various colleges and universities for research purposes. 

Qualifications required for Data Scientist:

The job of a data scientist is purely based on knowledge of probability and which is required for predictive analytics. Hence a data scientist is required a significant amount of high level of education and experience in the field.

To become a data scientist a minimum bachelor’s degree in computer or mathematics is required.

Nowadays a bachelor’s degree in data science is also available in various colleges and universities where you can learn statistics, analysis techniques & methods, and programming languages. Most of the data scientist also complete a post-graduate degree or a Ph.D. in the same field.

Once you full fill the above requirement then you can apply for an entry-level job in the data science field.

Skills required for Data Scientist

A data scientist is a job of playing with big data that require multiple tools and to use such tools a data scientist needs some set of skills.

Apart from a bachelor’s degree, the following are to some wide range of technical competencies required to becoming a one good data scientist:

1. Statistical Analysis
2. Programming Skills
3. Machine Learning
4. Database Management
5. Data Intuition
6. Communication Skills

Data Scientist Job Description

The main responsibility of data scientists is to utilize their analytical, statistical, and programming skills to collect, analyze, and interpret big data sets to provide solutions to difficult business challenges.

The job profile or description always varies from employer to employer. We have here provided a sample job description of a data scientist. This is for illustration purposes only.

1. To identify opportunities for leveraging company data to drive business solutions by working along with stakeholders.
2. Gathering & analyzing a large amount of structured and unstructured data from various methods and provide actionable insights.
3. Database mining and analyzing for improvement in new product development, marketing strategies, and business strategies.
4. Create custom data models and algorithms to apply to data sets
5. To increase customer experience & revenue generation use predictive modeling.
6. Create an A/B testing framework for company and test model quality.
7. Work & coordinate with various functional teams to implement models and monitor outcomes.
8. Create new processes, tools & systems to monitor & analyze data accuracy and model performance.
9. Processing, cleansing, and verifying the integrity & accuracy of data used for analysis purposes.

There are many more responsibilities that come under job description changes from employer to employer.

Data Scientist Salary

In the last five years, the role of Data scientists has evolved dramatically from just data miners to complicated problem solution providers.

There is a high demand for a data scientist in the USA to Canada or Singapore to India. This high demand has changed the future of data scientists. In a highly competitive world, employers are facing a challenge to retain talent. 

After analyzing the data scientists’ salary trends across the market (Glassdoor), we have brought you the 5 country’s data science salaries of February 2020.

Country	Lowest Salary (Annual)	Average Salary (Annual)	Highest Salary (Annual)
United States	$83K	$113K	$154K
Canada	$44K	$60K	$79K
United Kingdom	$33K	$51K	$77K
Singapore	$11K	$54K	$88K
India	$6K	$13K	$26K

We have also come up with 9 employers data science salaries of February 2020 of India from Glassdoor who are hiring data scientists.

Company Name	Lowest Salary (Annual)	Average Salary (Annual)	Highest Salary (Annual)
Microsoft	$3K	$22K	$32K
IBM	$7K	$17K	$47K
Cognizant Technology	$6K	$14K	$24K
Accenture	$6K	$14K	$30K
Wipro	$6K	$12K	$19K
Ericsson Worldwide	$5K	$19K	$44K
Mu Sigma	$5K	$8K	$13K
Tata Consultancy Services	$6K	$8K	$24K
Infosys	$4K	$11K	$21K

Where the jobs are

In the coming year, around 60-70% of companies across the world are planning to hire a data scientist or hire data mining consultancy. Across the world, several companies are looking for data science experts to find a solution for uncertain marketing conditions.

Here is the list of top 10 cities which are hiring most of the data scientist in the world.

1. Lexington Park, The United States
2. Phoenix, Arizona
3. San Jose, California
4. Dublin, Ireland
5. Bengaluru, India
6. Boston, Massachusetts
7. Geneva, Switzerland
8. London, UK
9. Pulau Ujong, Singapore
10. Paris, France

Which Top industries hiring

Nowadays every big organization wants to explore customer data to increase their business revenue and they are hiring data scientists to work on big customer data and provide potential market or solution to increase market revenue.

Therefore, you have good prospects as a data scientist if you have required degree and skills such as data mining, analytical, programming, statistics, machine learning, database management, data Intuition with other tools.

1. E-commerce
2. Software
3. Healthcare & Pharmaceutical
4. Telecommunications Sector
5. Internet Industry
6. Automotive Industry
7. FMCG

We have tried to provide maximum data in this article. Hope this will provide you a proper understanding of a career in the data science field.