“There were five exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every two days.”

~Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman at Google)

The term data science was first popularized in 2001 as it was used by William Cleveland in a publication. Moving forward to 2012, the Harvard Business Review popularized this field as ‘the hottest career of the 21st century.

Currently, several businesses and industries are hiring professionals with data science skills.

Witnessing the large amount of data created, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of job roles seeking data science skills will grow by 28 percent by 2026. One can clearly understand that this field is witnessing a lot of demand with no dip at any point for the next ten years. It is only fair to assume that a data science career will not slow down.

Let us understand what data science is, the reasons for the demand for professionals, job roles, and growth after data science certification online in different industries.

What is data science?

It is a practice of using data to understand and solve real-world problems. It is a multidisciplinary blend of algorithm development, technology, and data inference used to solve empirical complex problems.

Why is there a demand for data science professionals?

Large data sets

A report by IBM says that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated each day. Companies now possess piles of data that require organizing and working on to draw meaningful insights, for which data science professionals are required.

Demand-supply gap

According to McKinsey, a major talent deficit is of a data scientist who can work on analytics, with abundance in demand. A report by LinkedIn in 2018, stated that there is a huge supply gap of over 150,000 professionals having data science skills in the U.S. alone.

Trending skills

Another significant reason for such demand is that vital skills like Python, statistics, machine learning, SQL, Hadoop, and NoSQL are among the top demanded skills and are hard to find in one person.

What are the job roles in data science?

Some of the finest job roles that one can choose in a data science career are:

• Data analyst
• Data administrator
• Data scientist
• Data and analytics manager
• Data engineer
• Machine learning engineer

Let us have a look at data science job roles and their attractive salaries:

Which industries are creating jobs for data science professionals?

A survey conducted by Deloitte Access Economics states that over 75 percent of industries have plans to spend more on their data analytics abilities. Media, healthcare, and cybersecurity rank among the top sectors.

Media and entertainment

Big players in media and entertainment such as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime have applied data science for enhanced customer satisfaction.

For instance, media and entertainment companies need to evaluate posts, messages and several fragments related to customer data which is why they hire data scientists and engineers with upgraded data science skills to develop and design statistical models for operations research and to work on content recommendations.

Healthcare

Evaluation of massive big data in healthcare departments will require data science professionals as more data is generated about patients every day that is large and complicated.

For instance, there are several cases worldwide where diagnostic errors have led to patient deaths. Enlitic (a deep learning startup) employs professionals to increase the efficiency and accuracy of diagnostics that will avoid such errors.

Cybersecurity

This industry has witnessed a recent surge with several organizations leveling up their security due to increased malware. Demand for data engineers is high as these organizations need them for intrusion and anomaly detection issues.

For instance, Splunk, a cybersecurity company, is hiring data engineers proficient in Tableau, Apache Spark, and Knime so that they can identify unsafe data practices in pipelines, which could potentially leak sensitive business information.

To wrap up…

Data science is currently among the top careers in the world. Until recently, only large companies would employ data science professionals, but now, almost every company including startups is hiring professionals for different job roles. Considering high salaries, high industry demands, and several other perks.