The Evolving Role Of The Data Scientist

By Ariel Amster, Qubole

Data scientists must be feeling pretty good about themselves. After all, wherever you turn, you read about how popular their job is. In their listing of the 25 best jobs in America, Glassdoor revealed data scientist is at the top of the list, scoring the best in categories such as Career Opportunity and Job Score. That doesn’t even account for Harvard Business Review calling the position of data scientist the Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.

That was back in October 2012, and not much has changed in the perception of data scientists. It’s clear that businesses place a lot of value in hiring a qualified data scientist. With so much attention being paid to them, data scientists likely feel pretty comfortable with where they’re at. So why are data scientists so sought after these days? What has led to the bold proclamations and rising popularity? A close examination quickly reveals why data scientist jobs are so hot right now.

It’s easy to say that data scientists have an attractive job because of the high salary. Glassdoor’s ranking of data scientist as the top job shows a median base salary of more than $116,000. But as many people are aware, salary is only an effect. The reasons behind the high pay indicate much more. As mentioned, businesses have a lot of demand for data scientists. We do, after all, live in the era of big data analytics, where organizations of all types and sizes are gathering as much data as they can from a large variety of sources. Businesses want to utilize that data in the most effective way possible, deriving as great a value from it as they can. To do so, they need a data scientist (or two, or more) on staff.

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