The Big Data expert or “data scientist” is one of the most promising professions for the XXI century. According to the Harvard Business Review, Big Data analysts will be the most demanded professionals in the upcoming years. This is also confirmed by Indeed.com, ensuring that jobs related to Big Data have risen up a 15.000% in just two years.
“Big Data analysts will be the most demanded professionals in the upcoming years”
Why Companies Need Big Data Experts
The Big Data expert is a high-level qualified professional with enough training and curiosity to interpret big amounts of data and draw conclusions out of it. When we talk about Big Data, we refer to systems that manipulate large amounts of data in the field of information and communication technologies. The term of Big Data was coined in 2008 by D.J. Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher, who were responsible for data and analytics in Linkedin and Facebook respectively at that time.
“The term of Big Data was coined 7 years ago by the responsible of data and analytics in Linkedin and Facebook”
The sudden appearance of Big Data experts has a reason for being; companies begin to face some quantities and formats of information that they never had to deal with before. From the Gigabytes to Terabytes, then Pentabytes, afterwards Zettabytes… data never ends. Therefore, companies need skilled analytical professionals who can manage and draw conclusions from these large clusters of information.
Big Data fever also arises at the time when the technology that enables the management of this type of data appears; Cloud Computing, Business Intelligence, ERP, Open Source tools, etc. So we see that Big Data and its evolution are closely related to the software and technology of data management. Anyway, even if the importance of these technological advances is unquestionable, those individuals capable of handling them properly are equally important.
In the field of enterprise management software demand has grown much faster than supply. In fact, the lack of specialists in Big Data is becoming a problem for many sectors. That’s why some universities are launching masters and postgraduate programs in order to fulfill this new necessity. For example, many individuals chose to study a business analytics master to receive the necessary training so that they can be able to manage such a huge amount of data.
The huge gap between demand and supply of these skilled professionals, has also increased considerably the salaries. According to the announcements published at Indeed.com the Big Data analyst is paid an average of $ 80,000 per year in the United States, an amount that keeps rising up.
“The gap between the demand and supply of these kind of professionals have raised considerably their salaries”
The Demanded Profile of a Big Data Expert
The Big Data analysts usually meet the following requirements:
- Expertise in the following areas: mathematics, statistics, computer science…
- Great capacity for problem solving (Actually, Big Data is a huge problem).
- Good management of numbers.
- They are able to analyze, solve and explain what they have seen so that others can understand it without going into scientific concepts.
- Knowledge in programming. They are capable of expressing information in computer languages.
- They can easily adapt to any sector.
So as you see, there is a huge career opportunity in such a promising and recent profession like the Big Data expert. Just get the right training and start to analyze and understand this huge amounts of data and fulfill one of the biggest needs of the XXI Century enterprises.