Everything You Need To Know About What Does a Data Scientist Do?

Last Updated on: October 4, 2022

Data science is a blend of algorithms to measure, track and record data performances. It is gaining popularity in almost every industry due to its ability to mine a sea of structured and unstructured datasets and extract insights for efficient business decisions. This explains why analytics adoption among the largest firms in India stood at 74.5% in 2021. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Flipkart have the biggest analytics units, while Bharti Airtel and Myntra have the highest analytics predictions. Interestingly, 43.4% of analytics functions of the top companies are based out of Mumbai, with Delhi coming in second at 24.3%.  

Data science today is a promising career option since companies need professionals to manage vast volumes of data that are virtual gold mines of information to boost revenue. The demand for data scientists is now higher than the demand for many ITES jobs. So, if you’re considering data science as a career, make sure you choose the right educational program. 

The Data Science Architect Program, offered by GeekLurn, in partnership with NASSCOM and IBM, ensures 100% job placement with 1-on-1 career mentorship, live training sessions, scholarships and real-time sponsored project experience. The programs, designed to build a strong foundation in data science, ease the payment of fees, allowing students to start paying EMIs only after placement at the end of the course.

A data scientist’s role is to work closely with businesses and design data modeling processes, build predictive models and create algorithms. Read on to know more.

What is the work of a Data Scientist?

Data scientists combine practical skills like maths and coding for statistical analysis. Their output helps businesses take strategic and critical decisions to propel growth. Companies are able to understand huge amounts of data from different sources and ensure data-driven decisions.

Southwest Airlines, one of the major airlines in the US, was able to save $100 million by leveraging data. The company lowered the idle time of its aircraft, which is the time spent waiting on the tarmac and wasting fuel. This helped them optimise resource utilisation.

The term “data science” was first coined in 2001. Since then, it has been a wonderful journey, with the field growing across all verticals to explore patterns and behaviours that would have been an overwhelming task when done manually.

Some of the significant data scientist roles and responsibilities include:

• Integrate, process, clean and store data
• Present conclusions to stallholders
• Bridge business gaps by communicating information to the IT teams
• Leverage AI and ML by using programming languages
• Convert gigantic datasets into usable information
• Identify and refine the target audience for the best business outcome
• Enable better customer engagement for high-end profitability
• Warehousing, processing, architecture and staging of data
• Ensure better customer experiences by analysing purchase history data

Anyone who wishes to pursue data science as a career has a world of opportunities waiting for them. You can develop statistical and econometric models for different issues like clustering, sampling, pattern analysis, classification, simulation and projection. A data scientist is able to support technical and futuristic abilities in the data analytics field to assist different analytics projects.

The main aim is to help solve tough business problems, such as product fulfilment optimisation, to drive profit. Glassdoor discovered that the responsibility of a data scientist is one of the highest-scoring jobs in 2020 in terms of job satisfaction and demand.

Data Scientist Job Titles

The most common data science careers include the following roles:

Data scientists: Design data modeling processes to build algorithms and predictive models and perform custom analysis

Data analysts: Compile large data sets and use them to identify trends and draw meaningful conclusions. This helps in taking strategic business decisions. The roles of data scientist and data analyst are often confused, but in reality, their responsibilities are very different.

Business intelligence specialists: Business intelligence specialists are good at identifying trends in data sets.

Data architects: They design, generate, and manage a company’s data architecture

Data engineers: Clean and organise data collected from various sources and transfer it to data warehouses.

Key Skills Needed To Become A Data Scientist

If you’re pursuing a career in data science, you’ll need to develop the skills needed for data scientist jobs in a variety of industries and organisations. Let’s take a look at the skills a data scientist needs:

Programming Skills – You need to have knowledge of statistical programming languages ​​such as R, Python and database query languages ​​such as SQL, and Hive. Familiarity with Scala, Java, or C++ will be an added advantage.

Statistics – Knowledge of statistics is essential for any data-driven enterprise. You need to have good applied knowledge of statistics, including knowledge of statistical tests, distributions, regression, maximum likelihood estimators etc. 

Maths: Understanding the basics of multivariate analysis and linear algebra is important as it forms the basis of many predictive performance or algorithmic optimization techniques.

Machine Learning – Good knowledge of machine learning methods such as k-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Forest, Naive Bayes, and SVM is required.

Data Wrangling – Dealing with data imperfections is a key aspect of a data scientist’s job description.

Data Visualization – You need to have experience with data visualization tools such as Tableau, JupyteR, Dundas BI, Google Charts, Visual.ly etc. to help encode data visually.

Communication Skills – Explaining the results of your research to technical and non-technical people in a clear and concise way is very important.

You also need to have strong problem-solving abilities along with having an analytical mind and strong business acumen.

Data Scientist Salary In India

The salaries of data scientists in India range from Rs 4,50,000 to Rs 25,00,000, with an average annual salary of Rs 10,50,000. Here’s further bifurcation to give you a detailed idea:

Data Scientist Salary By Location

Data Scientist Salary By Experience

Why take up Data Science as a career?

A data scientist’s role extends beyond just data analysis and into data engineer, machine learning engineer, data science manager and analyst. You can expect to take home an average salary of ₹4.5 lakhs to ₹25 lakhs with less than one year of experience. You will need skills like Python, SQL, R, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining, NLP, Big Data, Open Source and Computer Science. 

A data scientist’s responsibilities will continue to be in high demand in future, given the valuable information that data can offer every sector of the economy. In India, the demand for data scientists can be seen in the 4.71% rise in job openings in this field from June 2020 to June 2021. In fact, India contributed 9.4% of the total global analytics job openings in 2021, which is a rise from the 7.2% in January 2020. Data analytics is expected to create more than 11 million jobs by 2026, with the field increasing investments in ML and AI by 33.49% in 2022.

The bottom line:

Now that you have a basic insight into what the role of a data scientist is, you can make an informed career choice. If you come from a computer, maths, finance or business background, taking up a data science course can be a good career option. You will have a clear understanding of functions, loops and logical programming, along with knowledge of analytic tools like Excel and Tableau to accelerate your journey in this field.

FAQs

Neel Neeraj

Neel is a Product Manager with an interest in Data Science, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, DevOps, and Blockchain with expertise in Python, R, Java, Power BI and Data analytics.