Data Scientist
Career Area: Planning and Analysis
Occupation Group: Data Analysis and Mathematics
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Data Scientist earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $110,764
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $111,357
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Utilizes skills and experience to systematically answer questions using data to provide actionable recommendations. Commonly utilizes advanced statistical analysis and machine learning techniques. Common responsibilities also include data cleaning and data management.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 1104 | +14.3% |
| Nationwide | 34153 | +16.5% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Data Scientist is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
- Creativity: Mental characteristic that allows a person to think outside of the box, which results in innovative or different approaches to a particular task.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Data Science: Data science, also known as data-driven science, is an interdisciplinary field about scientific methods, processes, and systems to extract knowledge or insights from data in various forms, either structured or unstructured, similar to data mining.
- Python: Python is a widely used high-level programming language for general-purpose programming, created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991.
- Machine Learning: Machine learning is the subfield of computer science that, according to Arthur Samuel, gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Samuel, an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence, coined the term machine learning in 1959 while at IBM. Evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence, machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data such algorithms overcome following strictly static program instructions by making data-driven predictions or decisions, through building a model from sample inputs.
- SQL: SQL ( ESS-kew-EL or SEE-kwl, Structured Query Language) is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS).
- Data Analysis: Data analysis, also known as analysis of data or data analytics, is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Data Scientist that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Model Building: Experience constructing representations of engineering and financial problems in a way that allows the sensitivity of individual variables to be understood.
- Econometrics: Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data and is described as the branch of economics that aims to give empirical content to economic relations.
- Computer Vision: Working experience of Computer Vision, which is an interdisciplinary field that deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do. Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions.
- NumPy: Working experience of NumPy, which is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays.
- Keras: Working experience of Keras. Keras is an open source neural network library written in Python. Designed to enable fast experimentation with deep neural networks, it focuses on being user-friendly, modular, and extensible.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 24% |
| 3 to 5 years | 50% |
| 6 to 8 years | 16% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Data Scientist
- Data Science Manager
- Director, Data Science
- Associate Data Scientist
- Data Scientist I
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