Introduction to Careers in SQL
SQL means structured query and domain-specific language used to communicate, manipulate data stored in RDBMS databases. SQL is spread across many domains and has many concepts and theories. To start a career in this one should master all SQL concepts. Careers in SQL has many roles to play in a Data concentric organization so SQL professionals with analytical thinking and applying them to SQL has high demand in today’s software market. Candidates with a passion for working on data and its challenges then SQL is the career they should peruse.
We can find lots of jobs in a market related to SQL as SQL is found on-premises and in the cloud creating a high need for careers in SQL professionals. In today’s world technology is moving forward but SQL skills will last forever and will take you to the desired goals.
Education to Improve Careers in SQL
Careers in SQL job requirements and mandatory qualifications may differ from company to a company, based on client requirement and job type, time and money(ROI) for SQL roles.
- Future SQL professionals should have a bachelor’s degree or Master degree in computer science or computer information systems (CIS), or IT related major Specialization like B. Tech/B. E/MCA.
- Certification on Database Administrator (DBA), Database Developer, Database Designer/Database Architect etc will add more value adding to the education.
- An additional recommendation is to learn PL/SQL and ETL tools which has more demand in a market.
Career Path in SQL
Out of the most popular databases, SQL Server stands in third place. Millions of SQL Server databases are available and there are many SQL professionals work with SQL database/Server on a continuous basis.
SQL career paths include SQL Server Database Administration and Development, Business intelligence professionals, Data science, and engineering will come in successful SQL career path.
DBA career has high demand out of all SQL career roles. We have different types of DBA careers paths like Development DBA, Production DBA and Infrastructure DBA.
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Job Positions or Application Areas
- Database Administrator (DBA) – Person responsible for administration and maintains a SQL Server database.
- Database Developer – A Database Developer main duties are to design and implementation of databases.
- Data base testers – A database testers primary job roles is to validate database for right data loaded.
- Data Scientist – It’s a new job to deal with Big data, responsible for analyzing, predicting and mining data to drive the business forward.
- ETL Developer – ETL developer will work on extracting, transforming data from databases.
- Data Application Interface Developer – Who works with different programming languages like ASP.Net, C #, Java needs to connect to databases.
- BI Application Developer –Business Intelligence Developer is one of high demand job in the market related to Data Warehousing, Reporting and data transformations and dealing query languages to analyze different data cubes and marts.
- BI Administrator – BI Administrator is responsible for executing ETL jobs and to publish and monitor Data Warehousing reports sometimes comparing data with SQL database for backend validation
- Big Data Expert – Big Data expert works with Big data tools like Hadoop, Spark, Hive, etc which requires SQL proficiency.
- Cloud database Expert – We have many cloud databases like AWS, GCC, Microsoft Azure which needs SQL professionals.
- Database Migration Engineer – He is responsible for database migration or data migration from different sources into SQL server.
- Data Analyst – Main responsibility is to create Key performance indicators to analyze data
- BI Reporting Engineer – Builds, execute business reports and metrics using different BI tools like Microstrategy, Tableau, Cognos, Panorama Necto Business Intelligence solutions which build in SQL databases reporting concept.
- BI Solution Architect (SME) – Provides solutions for a business problem by analyzing data from various sources like SQL etc.
- NoSQL DBA – there are many no SQL databases like MongoDB etc but SQL skills are must applicable to work with NoSQL administration.
- Big Data Architect – In today’s world data is everywhere in huge volume, velocity &in different verity so big data architect provides solutions to handle data in large number.
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Salary (US data)
According to current salary data as on March 2018, SQL professionals get salary as per company and the roles they work on. An average salary of SQL professional varies based on experience and the roles they play in a different organization.
Salary may be paid on an hourly basis for contractor SQL professionals and Annually for permanent SQL professionals.
Experienced SQL professionals can negotiate the salary, but keep in mind that SQL skills should be on top when you negotiate your salary.
Below data chart gives SQL professional salary comparison metrics across roles.
Above Salary comparison is based on data analysis performed across payscale.com salary data.
Data displayed in the graph is for the Country United States and its in Currency USD and SQL salary data as on 19 Mar 2018.
Conclusion or Career Outlook
The Career path points mentioned above helps SQL professionals to plan their career with high expectations and a good range of salary. As per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), all IT programming jobs will grow rapidly. As we are in Data-driven world where social media, Business forecast, Predicative analysis are in high demand across data world so there is a huge increase in number of websites tied along with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc generating large volume of data ending up in complex data warehouses will increase the growth for SQL developer jobs.
It is a high demand skill in the data-driven computer industry. It will be there until the end of the world because we all live with data everywhere so SQL professionals demand will not reduce. As organizations deal with daily petabytes of structured or unstructured data from different media, it all ends up with data so it is much needed for data analysis and prepare data for future predictions.
Keep in mind as technologies emerge SQL interfaces and methods may get improvised so be in and live in SQL technology to be on top of SQL career path.
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This has been a guide to Careers in SQL. Here we have discussed the Introduction, Education, Career Path, along with Salary and Career Outlook in SQL. You may also look at the following article to learn more –
