Five reasons why Data Scientists are Hot!

Data Scientists-‘The Czar of the Modern World’

The Harvard Business Review claims it as one of the sexiest jobs of the 21st century; and yes the term itself beholds quite vim and vigor as Data Scientists are getting hotter for better. The Data Scientist title has been around for less than a decade and the term was coined in 2008 by Dr. DJ Patil, Chief Data Scientist White house of Science and Technology Policy and Jeff Hammerbacher, Chief-Scientist, Cloudera. They described it as a rare species being chased by startups and big technology companies alike for their ability to make sense of large and complex set of information. No wonder its demand is rife and served as a booster for their salaries that have shot through the roof.

The Data Scientists are no less than big guns as their sudden prominence portrays that even the bigwig’s and startups now need to comb huge volumes of data for information that is critical for the success of an idea or business. The eCommerce companies who are quite ubiquitous in India have also realized their worth. The chief technology officer of Flipkart, Amod Malviya mentions that ‘Data is a large asset that is often not used to its full potential in most organizations. There is a huge amount of technology investments that we can make in this area’. No wonder the online retailer generates terabytes of data every day and is now building a data science lab that can help them sell better. The big technology trend is to make systems intelligent and data is the raw material.

Here are five reasons why Data Scientists are scorching Hot!!

1. IBM & HP’s of the world pouring Billions of Dollar-Yes, they are the new ‘Honcho’s’

To meet growing client demands in today’s data intensive industries, IBM has established the world’s deepest and broadest portfolio of Big Data and Analytics technologies and solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware. Fueling this is the fact that IBM has made a multi-billion dollar investment in big data and analytics — $24 billion since 2005 through both acquisitions and R&D — to extend its leadership position in this strategic market. HP and GE on other hand each invested over $1 billon in big data. The big data and analytics market will reach $125 billion worldwide in 2015, according to IDC. So if you have any doubt if Big Data is only a buzz word think twice!

2. Demand Supply Gap- Greet the sexy beast!

From tech startups to Fortune 500 companies, data scientists are a hot commodity. A McKinsey study predicts that by 2017 the U.S. could face a shortage of almost 200,000 people with “deep analytical skills.” No surprise, then, that they boast an eye-popping average starting salary of around $120,000. People with the necessary skills are scarce, primarily because the discipline is so new. But, the situation is rapidly changing, as some universities around the world have started to offer different kinds of masters programs in data science. This year, for example, New York University is offering Master in Data Science, and Aegis School of Business & Telecommunication in association with IBM has launched Full Time and Executive Part Time Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Business Analytics and Big Data, India’s first holistic Data Science program.

“Presently, there are only 10,000-15,000 analytics and data experts in India, and there will be a shortage of two Lacs data scientists in India over the next few years,” CEO of Fractal and a member of the Analytics Interest Group, Srikanth Velamakanni.

3. Its Money Raining- The hunt for Unicorn Data Scientists are in the making!

Mobile commerce player Paytm is hiring a team of eight data scientists in Canada, paying on an average $250,000 (Rs 1.5 crore) each. “The team will look at the large amount of data we have from different angles. For instance fraud detection, up selling and such,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of One97 Communication which owns Paytm. “If a person paid Rs 60-70 Lacs is offered Rs 1.2 crore, then no one in the marketplace will touch him for a while,” said Gattu, chief operating officer at Gramener. At least four senior industry professionals said Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Walmart were among the companies waving fat pay packets to top data scientists.

Salaries for chief data scientists with over 10 years of experience in mathematics and statistics are regularly touching the Rs 1 crore mark; as mentioned in Economics Times. Forget the complex Data Science skills, market has become so crazy that even candidates with 1 to 2 years experience in Hadoop alone are making 7.5 to 10 Lacs a year.

Unicorn Data Scientist are the upgraded version of our racy data scientists but are a little hard to hunt and are compensated more than $200,000 per year. Even if our desirables don’t know how to code, all thanks to the rising data science tide that has lifted the compensation of all other data analytics professionals, according to a latest survey!

4. Data Scientists are Supermen with Crystal Ball- Aren’t they big cheese!

Data Scientists are super men who tell stories out of the data, respective of the size of data: big or small. They answer questions like what’s happening. What will happen? What we should do now? These are termed as BI, Predictive analytics and Prescriptive Analytics. They use statistics, Machine learning, NLP, R, Python, Hadoop, Spark to create Crystal Ball to predict future, solve business problem or find out the missing opportunities. Snapdeal, which has over 20 million subscribers and generates terabytes of data through the interactions that happen with customers in addition to a catalogue of over 5 million, churns 15 million data points (related data set like a consumer shopping on specific days for a particular thing) within two hours, using Hadoop. About 35% of its orders come from recommendation and personalized systems, and the conversion rate of such orders is 20-30% higher than normal orders, the company claims.

5. With Data Science you can finally be a Rock Star!

If you weren’t homecoming royalty in college, it’s time to wipe away your tears. From Google to Twitter, IBM to Snapdeal the hottest tech and eCommerce companies are clamoring for Data Scientists. President Obama has appointed Dr. DJ Patil as Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As Chief Data Scientist, DJ will help shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join us in serving the public.