Careers in Big Data

Careers in Big Data – Introduction

Big data refers to data sets which are very large in volume and nature wise complex that our tradition data storage and data processing systems are insufficient to meet the requirement.

Data plays a major role in enhancing the business by analyzing the requirements and feedback from the customers and since the customer base is increasing day by and so the data, Companies need to analyze the data to provide better services to customers and also to remain in competition in today’s rapidly changing world. Nowadays companies are in a race, making maximum use of useful data generated from various data sources using multiple tools and technologies which have also increased the need of professionals to process, analyze, store and transfer data. The requirement of big data professional is increasing exponentially in the industries dealing with electronics, retails, insurance, finance, public sector etc. In this article, we will see the variously available careers in big data options.

Education to develop Careers in Big Data

Certifications- If we talk about courses then one must have at least a diploma in computer related streams which gives you the basic understanding of computer architecture, operating systems, Networks etc. and then you can opt for professional online/offline big data certifications provided by different institutes across the globe.

Graduation- If you are school pass out and especially looking to make a careers in big data, then at graduation level you must opt for computer engineering, which will give you a deeper understanding of programming languages and algorithms and how and when to use them. To become a good big data professional one must have a good logical, analytical and problem-solving skills to deal with various real-world data related challenges

Masters– Masters in big data will advance the careers in big data which adds a boom to your big data knowledge resulting in ending up with a good highly paid job.

Career Path in Role of Big Data

Data Analyst – The role of a data analyst is to use the various big data tools to process the data. Analysts mainly deal with structured, unstructured and semi-structured data and to process this data analyst interact with tools like a  hive, pig, NoSQL databases and frameworks like Hadoop, spark, etc. Their main responsibility is too big out the hidden potential information from data to help companies to increase their revenue by making wise decisions. To be data analyst one must have good problem solving and arithmetic skills. The kind of work analyst do is studying past trends, generating patterns, producing reports etc.

 Programmer- The role of the programmer is to write the code to perform repeated and conditional actions on the available data sets. To write good and efficient code one should have good knowledge of various programming languages and possess good analytical, mathematical, logical and statistical skills. The most common languages with which big data programmers deal with in day to day life are Shell scripting, Java, Python, R etc. The data with which programmers code deals with is either stored in flat files or in databases so a programmer should also have a good understanding of file systems and databases.

Admin- The role of an admin is to take care of the infrastructure which manages the data and big data related tools in the big data ecosystem. Their role also involves taking care of all the nodes along with their network configurations. Admins make sure of the high availability time of infrastructure to support the big data operations. Installing of various tools and managing hardware of clusters is also taken care of by admins. To be an admin one must have a good understanding of file system, operating system, computer hardware, and networking.

Solution Architect-  The role of big data solution architect is to analyze the real world problem and develop a proper strategy to solve the problem by utilizing their expertise and implementing by using the power of the big data framework. The solution architect takes the decision on which tool/programming language to be used to achieve the solution. To be solution architect one must have good problem-solving skills along with the in-depth knowledge of frameworks and tools, their licensing cost and their alternative open source tools available to process big data.

Job Positions or Application Areas

Almost every domain requires big data to unlock the capability of the customer-driven economy. Big data has its deep roots in almost every industry, let’s see a few examples.

Banking Sector:  The banking sector is one of the major sectors in the world and uses big data in many ways like

• Using big data banks detects real-time unauthorized transactions and blocks them.
• Stores the information of millions of customers and merchants in big data systems.
• Study the spending patterns of a customer by analyzing the data of his past expenditures and provides the offers of the customer’s interest. Basically called as campaigning.

Healthcare in Big Data

• Careers in big data Analyze the data of a patient generated by various electronic medical devices like Electronic Health Records (EHRs), wearable sensors, etc. which helps the doctors to diagnose the disease and provide better treatment to
• Careers in big data Analyze the reviews of medicines provided by patients on various online forums to figure out the effectiveness of medicine and its side effects.
• Careers in big data Maintaining patient-related data like treatment, surgery, medication, recovery time, etc. and if treatment results are positive, then giving the same treatment to patients with the same suffering.

Retail industry:

• Careers in Big data helps in deciding the price of newly launched products by analyzing the price of similar products already present in the market manufactured by their competitors.
• Analyze the data to gather the information of products in demand, its review and its feedback from customers, which helps the industry to improve the faulty products.

Understand the real-time requirement of customer and provide the real-time suggestions which help to increase the business and also saves the time of the customer.

Careers in Big data is almost in every industry and service providers around us like Railways, transport, educational institutes, energy, telecom, government etc. with the similar use cases.

Salary (US data and not India specific figures)

There is a huge requirement of big data professional across the globe, this is the sector where the number of professionals is less than what is required resulting in making it one of the highly paid jobs. As per www.glassdoor.com, the salary provided by various organizations in the US is as follows:

J.P. Morgan –                                                                                     $93K – $100K

Cognizant Technology Solutions –                                                $92K – $98K

CSAA Insurance Group-                                                                 $133K – $144K

ZipRecruiter –                                                                                   $81K – $89K

The above salary figures are analyzed based on employees in these organizations. One cannot deny the fact that the salary of individual directly depends on factors like the degree (Bachelors/Masters), experience in the domain, command over technology, etc. also it is not very easy to go grab a good big data job until and unless one has a good grip on tools and technologies to understand and solve the real world big data challenges.

Conclusion or Career Outlook

As per Forbes, IBM predicts that the demand for big data professionals will increase by 28% by the year 2020. Another survey from Forbes states that 58% are adapting to big data analytics. The careers in big data are at the boom and the requirement of professionals is increasing at a good pace.

• This is a good time to grab the golden opportunity to become a part of the big data wave.
• The Careers in big data analytics has become the top priority project for a lot of organizations and the career is also not only limited to a type of organization and is independent of a domain of industry.
• In the present scenario, big data professionals are paid huge bucks for the right set of skills. There are endless opportunities and scope for growth in big data. If one likes to play with data and maths then this can be among one of the best available options in making a career.

Recommended Article

This has been a guide to Careers in Big Data. Here we have discussed the Introduction, Education, Career Path in Big Data, Job Positions, Salary, Career Outlook in Big Data etc.you may also look at the following article to learn more –

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