Data Science

A data scientist’s job is to take data, extract meaning from it, and then use the information to help make decisions.

This may sound simple enough but in reality the process of acquiring clean, usable data from a massive dataset is a complex job by itself, and that’s before you start trying to analyze and use the data in a way that will improve the company’s product or processes.

Google’s core Search product is a good example of how data science can drive a company’s success.

Early (pre-Google) search engines acted like large directories. When you searched for a term they responded with a standard list of links leading to websites that were associated with keywords that matched your search term. Google’s search is much more sophisticated thanks to the machine learning algorithms that have been designed by Google’s data scientists.

When you make a search with Google they use an algorithm that takes in hundreds of data points to provide you with the most useful and relevant response possible – data like your previous search history, your current location, whether people who previously searched for that term prefered certain pages they viewed etc. The result is a SERP (“Search Engine Results Page”) that is essentially unique to you, and in theory at least, much more likely to provide you with the best results.

Data Scientist Salaries

With the growth in artificial intelligence and machine learning and companies struggling to make use of the huge amounts of data they are collecting, data scientists are one of the most in-demand (and highly paid) roles in tech.

There is a very strong employment market and very high salaries, often starting well over $100k and with leading data scientists working on tough problems like autonomous driving known to make more than $1M per year.

While the money can be enticing, data science comes with a similar warning as software development: the roles are very technical and are not suited to everyone so it’s very important to take some time to consider whether it’s the right career path for you.

As a large part of the job consists of applying statistical models to large data sets, it probably comes as no surprise that data science is well suited to people with highly analytical, problem solving personalities. It is also becoming increasingly common for data scientists to have some level of programming experience.

Many companies will expect their data scientists to have a high level of formal education in subjects like mathematics and statistics, so this is important to keep in mind if you’re interested in following a data science path.

Data scientists work with large sets of data so the positions are commonly found in more established companies with large customer or user bases, although they can also be found at startups that are focused on solving very data-heavy problems, like the software systems that power self-driving cars.