Traditionally, companies used to make business decisions based on their experience and made certain assumptions during various processes. Moreover, there were hardly any sources to gain customer feedback and improvise the products. Fast forward to today, companies are making better decisions that are backed by data insights and not on assumptions. In fact, if the firm has an online presence and promotes its products on social media platforms or eCommerce websites, then it can easily gain customer reviews. Today, whether people order food, buy products, or book a hotel online, they check the reviews posted about the concerned product or service and then make the final decision.
This huge amount of data collected by companies is nothing but big data. The data at first is in the raw format and of no use until it is analyzed by a data specialist. Such professionals are data scientists, data analysts, big data engineers, and data architects. Evidently, the demand for professionals who can deliver valuable business insights from raw data is quite high. Professionals who are embarking on a career in big data give priority to data engineer training to gain the right skills and make the most of growing job opportunities in this field.
Before enrolling in a training program, aspirants need to first understand the career path in big data. This article gives you all the details of the roadmap for a big data career in 2021. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
A Career in Big Data
There are different career paths you can take on to enter the world of big data. Let us discuss them one by one.
A big data engineer is the first term you’ll come across when looking for career opportunities in this profitable and demanding industry. These professionals handle some crucial tasks in an organization – manage data workflows, ETL processes, pipelines; build and maintain the software and hardware architecture; gather, interpret, analyze, and report on business data; and ensure seamless flow of data between servers and applications.
Professionals require specialized skills to handle the responsibilities of a big data engineer. Lately, universities do not offer a dedicated graduate-level program in big data. The existing big data engineers usually have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, statistics, or related fields. Big data aspirants having a different background prefer taking an online training program first to build a strong foundation in this field. Many reputed eLearning platforms offer big data courses online and guide professionals with world-class course material and instruction from industry experts.
Apart from this popular job role In Future big data incorporates many other promising job roles. Discussed below are the top ones.
Database administrator
Database administrators are primarily responsible for implementing the physical database design and monitoring database performance to deal with possibly damaging effects. When it comes to the development aspect, database administrators handle data definition language and SQL writing. They guide, review, and approve the design of new databases, establish the rules of access to the data and handle its security, and ensure database integrity and availability.
Business Intelligence Analyst
Business intelligence analysts are skilled in leveraging data analytics, data modeling, and data visualization techniques to transform raw data into valuable insights that aid decision making. Such professionals pay attention to details, analyze data effectively to uncover hidden trends and correlations, and respond to stakeholder’s requests for any specific information. They also have good business acumen and they identify areas where improvements can be made and revenue loss can be avoided.
Data Scientist
One of the highest-paying job roles these days, data scientists are analytical experts who gather, analyze, and interpret huge datasets. They are skilled in using clustering, machine learning algorithms, and data mining techniques so as to build new processes for data mining, modeling, and production. For an organization, they mine big data to make estimations regarding customer behavior and explore new opportunities for revenue growth.
Data Architect
A data architect is a senior-level designation associated with some crucial responsibilities like creating blueprints for data management systems, designing the structure of complex data frameworks, and implementing measures to ensure data accessibility and accuracy. In many organizations, data architects also collaborate with IT teams to build a data strategy that can address business requirements.
All these data-related roles are in high demand these days and there is no bar on salaries they are capable of achieving.
Step into Big Data Today
There are some basic skills one needs to develop irrespective of the career path they choose in data engineering. A basic understanding of statistics, core math, and any programming language is the foremost requirement. One should then know Linux fundamentals and an in-depth understanding of databases and Structured Query Language (SQL). Next, big data engineers have to work with a variety of tools like Hadoop, Hive, Apache Spark, Talend, and Redshift. Having hands-on experience in using these tools is also expected from seasoned big data engineers.
Learning all this on your own would be difficult for a beginner. As mentioned earlier, taking a big data course would be the right career move so as to develop the required skills. So, why delay entering this rewarding career field!