What is the right mix of competences for Data Scientists? First partial survey findings

The proliferation of data and the huge potentialities for companies to turn data into valuable insight are leading to a sharply increasing demand for Data Scientists.

Alessandro Piva, Big Data Analytics Observatory Research Director, Osservatori Digital Innovation of Politecnico di Milano

But what skills and educational background must a Data Scientist have? What is their position within the organization? What tools and programming languages do they mostly use? These are some of the questions that the Observatory for Big Data Analytics of Politecnico di Milano is investigating through an international survey submitted to Data Scientists: if you work with data in your company, please support us in our research and complete this anonymous survey.

In just a few days, the questionnaire has reached more than 200 responses worldwide. First and partial results confirm the heterogeneity of this figure in terms of skills and competences: data scientists are not just programmers or computer scientists. Actually, only one out of ten of current respondents declare themselves programming experts (the highest level in the survey, see the figure below). Greater expertise is acknowledged in statistics and soft skills (from about one out of three of respondents), in addition to technologic and business competences (just below twenty percent of the sample).

Looking at programming languages used for data science activities, at the current state of the survey, there isn’t one prevailing choice among others, even if almost all the respondents (about 95%) declare they use at least one of three: R, SQL or Phyton.

If you are a Data Scientist and you want to receive more detailed results with the main findings of the research, complete the questionnaire and leave your email in order for us to send you the material.

For more information about the research: Observatory for Big Data Analytics

www.osservatori.net