Data Science Career

Has anyone looked into this? Is there any correlation between this and a regular IT career? I am currently pursuing my BS at WGU with security focus. Just from doing some quick research, these type of jobs are offering anywhere from 100-300k...and there appears to be a "shortage". UC Berkeley is rolling out a new online Master in Information and Data Science.

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amcnow

Wikipedia

According to this, data science extends beyond the scope of IT. Data science is a fairly new field. A shortage in qualified candidates is to be expected, even if jobs are few and far between.

dmoore44

I know it's a pretty hot topic right now and has the potential to explode like the Cloud/VM disciplines. The only real crossover that I've been able to identify is when you come to something like security analytics. We use Splunk to gather and crunch data from a bunch of different sources (i.e. security tools/appliances/platforms).

If you want more info, check out this book: Amazon.com: Implementing Splunk: Big Data Essentials for Operational Intelligence eBook: Vincent Bumgarner: Kindle Store

GAngel

They've been in the finance industry since the beginning of time (quant,research analyst, they used to be called BA's before that became a buzzword as well).

computer sci + strong math or strong math + computer sci.

DissonantData

This is a rapidly growing field. You will probably be doing quite a bit of statistical analysis. You should know SAS or R programming (statistical programming) along with SQL. When I saw what kind of backgrounds are required, they were looking for people who studied computer science, math, or economics, or related degrees.

Akaricloud

There are definitely some nice paying data scientist positions out there within IT. The company I work for has been trying to hire a data scientist for big data purposes which would be quite the fun position.

atl_libra

So I would still be able to dabble in this field if I take the "Data Security" route? If I make this my niche would it be sustainable or am I better off just going with the broader security work?

Akaricloud

I wouldn't expect there's all too much crossover between the two, and if anything you'd need to take a more data scientist approach to fit into a role like that. From what I've gathered you need to have a much higher mathematical and data analysis background than you'd get in typical data security education.

dmoore44

atl_libra wrote: »

So I would still be able to dabble in this field if I take the "Data Security" route? If I make this my niche would it be sustainable or am I better off just going with the broader security work?

Sort of. Splunk is sort of like a SIEM on steroids, so it might be possible to do a little bit of data mining with dedicated SIEM products... In all honesty, I wouldn't hold my breath on being able to dabble a whole lot in data science/analytics/data mining if you go the security route. There just aren't a lot of identified applications for it at the moment.

If you're interested in the data science/analytics/data mining field, it might be best for you if you picked up a book on it and tried it out for yourself at home. I've got a few books on it, so I'll throw those out as a starting point:
Mining the Social Web: Analyzing Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites: Matthew A. Russell: 9781449388348: Amazon.com: Books
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Open-Source-Tools/dp/0596802358/ref=pd_sim_b_2
Python for Data Analysis: Wes McKinney: 9781449319793: Amazon.com: Books
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, Third Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems): Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, Jian Pei: 9780123814791: Amazon.com: Books

There are many, many other books that cover the topic with varying degrees of depth. Definitely explore if it's something you're interested in. Personally, if I were considering a job as a programmer/code monkey, I'd definitely consider the data science field before the traditional developer roles - it just seems a hell of a lot more interesting.

joehalford01

I'm looking at this intensely as well to take after finishing WGU, it looks like a cool program. You have to pass the GRE I believe so I will probably end up taking 6 months to read some data mining stuff to make sure I'm interested, and give myself a chance to study for the placement test as well.

kgb

Check into Coursera. They have some free courses on Big Data:

https://www.coursera.org/course/bigdata

https://www.coursera.org/course/datasci

Probably others as well.

Spaced

According to the IT program manager at WGU, they are in the process of creating a new degree track that focuses on this or at least business intelligence, which I thought was similar? The program is planned to roll out mid to late 2014.

higherho

I made a thread about Big-data (Cloudera is very big and owned by former google execs) and how future SA's will / should look into this and how to build / architect big data designs. I've been doing it for a year now (Apache Hadoop, Hbase, Zookeeper, Job trackers, etc) and its a lot of fun. Now of course I'm talking about SA / Engineering type stuff but the analysts (Data scientists, Big data developers, etc) will grow at a rapid rate. Right now its huge in the west coast but its slowly appearing on the East coast as well.

atl_libra

@higherho

Are the salaries thats being thrown around realistic, or just inflated and hyped?

higherho

Their pretty realistic (at least for SA spots). I was called by a financial institution (contractor position that would lead into perm) and it was in NYC. They offered 135k, 15k in moving me from my current location to anywhere in NYC or near it (30 miles roughly). They tried finding someone with 3 years exp but they've been searching for a while so the company made the requirements 1 year with big data and at least 3 years with typical SA experience in large environments. This individual called me and kept me on his file for future spots (I did not take the position mainly because of my family). Since then I've seen Big-data positions but haven't applied or looked but most I saw / talked to were in the DC area.

Now when the market gets enough people in it then I'm sure the salaries might decrease or at least the exp will go up.