Emerging Opportunities In Big Data Careers

big data career

The IT infrastructure is ever-changing. In the past few years, we have witnessed a significant breakthrough in the management techniques of businesses and firms around the world. Data accumulation and data analytics are entirely transforming industries today leading to a boom in big data careers.

Companies are now showing a keen interest in leveraging the power of Big Data to gain a competitive advantage in the market and expand their reach. As a result, what we now have is a global economy that is information-based to the core.Big Data Career

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Giants of the IT world and business sector are continually engaged in gathering a massive amount of real-time data from their customer base and analyzing it to promote better decision-making and boost profitability. According to IBM, businesses across the globe generate as high as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day!

When such a vast figure of data is combined with the power of IoT, e-commerce, financial and consultancy services, career opportunities around Big Data are bound to increase. And that is precisely what’s happening at present. Today, there is an increasing demand for jobs that no one had even heard of a year ago.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a professional services firm maintains that there are 2.3 million job openings solely demanding for professionals with analytical skills!Big Data Career Analytics

In almost all industries – from education to governance to healthcare – the demand for data analytics professionals is very high. As more companies are joining the bandwagon of data analytics, it has given rise to new and emerging job opportunities in Big Data. This, as a result, has increased the number of people interested in the field of data analytics.

So, if you’re aiming for one of the roles we’re going to discuss, we recommend you get equipped with data science certifications. That way, you’ll have a definite edge over your peers.

Now, without further ado, let’s check out the major Big Data Career opportunities.emerging big data careers

Big Data Career as a Data Scientist

A data scientist is someone who creates or designs models “that use advanced diagnostic analytics or predictive and prescriptive capabilities, but whose primary job function is outside the field of statistics and analytics.” However, while the strongest skill of a data scientist is analytics, he/she should be able to combine this skill with advanced statistical and machine learning tools to fully harness the potential of Big Data.

Data scientists excel in deconstructing both structured and unstructured data and analyze it by utilizing predictive and prescriptive analytics. With the insights thus gained, these data specialists then break down the opportunities and potential of the data to companies and firms, explaining to them how they can leverage the data to add value to their businesses.

IBM maintains that the job of a data scientist is the fastest-growing career in data analytics and predicts that it will scale up to 61,799 by 2020.

Big Data Career as a Big Data Engineer

A data engineer’s primary job is to transform huge amounts of data into ‘understandable’ insights that can benefit a firm’s decision-making process as well as its overall business strategy. To be precise, data engineers design and manage the entire infrastructure of Big Data. First, they gather the data, and then they construct the basic architecture that’s required to drive the analysis and processing of data. Once the data is processed, data engineers integrate it within the production and management infrastructure to facilitate innovative solutions and better business decisions.

Since data engineers work in close collaboration with data scientists, there has been a significant increase in this job position as well.

Big Data Career as a Data Visualization Analyst

Data analysts are essentially those people who help companies and firms understand the potential of Big Data. They translate the data into scalable information that can be put to good use. Utilizing visual analytics tools such as Tableau, QlikView, etc., and relying on BI, data analysts present data into visual formats like infographics, charts, and dashboards, for ease of understanding.

The job of a data analyst is mainly Descriptive Analytics oriented as they need to explore the possibilities of Big Data and present it to firms in layman’s terms.

Big Data Career as a Machine Learning Specialist

Machine Learning is a branch of computer science that exclusively deals with creating such algorithms as can ‘learn’ from the data patterns and predict the possible outcomes. Although the job of a machine learning specialist is quite similar to that of a data analyst, they differ in one aspect – while a data analyst analyzes the data and presents it in simplified terms, a machine learning specialist designs software that can run autonomously by utilizing the power of algorithms.

The demand for machine learning specialists is on the rise as these individuals possess high expertise regarding system design, data structures, and computer architecture. According to LinkedIn, today the number of machine learning specialists is 9.8 times more than what it was five years ago, with over 1,829 job listings on the site!

Big Data Career as E-Discovery Investigators

The position of E-discovery investigators is becoming increasingly important for large companies and organizations. E-discovery or electronic discovery entails the identification, collection, and generation of ESI (electronically stored information) against a lawsuit or for investigation purposes.

This process is highly complicated and hence, the rising need for specialists in this field. E-discovery investigators excel in unraveling and gathering data from connected devices or portals and analyzing this data to check for any possible digital footprints left behind by a hacker or a criminal.

Although these job titles are demarcated and differentiated, at the core of each of them is one basic skill – that of channelizing vast chunks of information and help make sense of this information to solve analytical problems of a business or an organization. So, often the skills demanded by these specific job roles overlap and have to be used interchangeably. As more companies and firms invest in Big Data in the future, there will arise many more such challenging job roles which are unheard of now.

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