The skyrocketing amount of data being generated by individuals and organisations is giving rise to demand for a new kind of professional, the data scientist, the inspiration for this week’s career memes.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) has forecast that, by 2020, there will be 10 times as many servers and enterprise data centres will be managing 14 times as much information, but there will only be 1.5 times as many IT professionals.
All that data will make it harder for businesses to decide exactly what consumers want, but that’s where data scientists come in, to analyse and make sense of all that information.
Data scientists can come from various backgrounds, such as statistics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, and other interrelated disciplines, and they can find employment with technology companies, government agencies, scientific organisations, and consulting and research firms, a Naturejobs blog post suggests.
In terms of compensation, PayScale indicates the median salary for an analytical data scientist is €39,500.
