Career Opportunities with Big Data Analytics

Big Data analytics enables you to tackle complex problems and provide timely insights needed to make the right decisions. Successful organizations can’t afford to wait for weeks or even days to know their next course of actions. Decisions need to be made in minutes or hours. With the explosion of data, the profile of data analytics has become crucial to many companies. They need more and more skilled professionals to work for them in this field.

Keeping this in mind, let’s look at how the Big Data Analytics is trending, along with job opportunities and its career aspects.

Market Predictions for Big Data Analytics

According to tech billionaire, Michael Dell, Big Data analytics is the next trillion-dollar market. Let’s not just take his word on it. Here’s a summary of predictions and forecasts for Big Data analytics from the International Institute for Analytics (IIA), Forrester, IDC, and Gartner:

• IDC forecasts the market for Big Data technology and services to grow at a 23.1% CAGR, reaching $48.6 billion in 2019.

• IDC predicts that by 2020, Big Data analytics will be embedded everywhere and 50% of all business analytics software will include prescriptive analytics.

• IIA predicts that automated data curation and management will free up analysts and data scientists to do more of the work they want to do.

• Forrester says that in 2016, Machine Learning will begin to gradually replace manual data wrangling and data governance.

• Also, vendors will market Machine Learning solutions as a way to make data ingestion, preparation, and discovery quicker.

• According to IDC, by 2020, the spendings on data preparation tools will grow 2.5x faster than traditional IT-controlled tools.

Analytics Trends for 2016

Big Data Analytics has been in the forefront of providing insights and predictive advantage to businesses. As a result, the role of data analytics is now considered essential for enterprise-wide implementation. 

Here is a brief glance at some of the most important data analytics trends for 2016 and beyond:

• Data science, predictive and prescriptive analytics merge together as the distinction between data science and analytics will continue to blur and become muddled, as big data gets more deeply integrated into more traditional businesses.

• Analysts need to move beyond analytics.

• Smarter thinking about data inclusion.

• Data governance to gain importance.

• Self-service Big Data findings to take center-stage.

Analytics Career Opportunities

Big Data Analytics career is wide as well as deep and one can choose from the 4 types of data analytics depending on their Big Data environment. They are as follows:

• Prescriptive Analytics

• Predictive Analytics

• Descriptive Analytics

• Diagnostic Analytics

Prescriptive Analytics

Prescriptive Analytics is the subset of business analytics, which aims to find the best course of action for a given situation. Prescriptive Analytics is related to both Descriptive as well as Predictive Analytics. Prescriptive Analytics helps to determine the best outcome among various choices. It also suggests decision options for how to take advantage of a future opportunity and illustrate the implications of each decision option.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive Analytics is a branch of data mining that predicts future probabilities and trends. In Predictive modeling, data is collected, a statistical model is formulated, predictions are made, and the model is validated as additional data becomes available.

Predictive Analytics encompasses three basic cornerstones. They are:

• Predictive modeling

• Decision Analysis and Optimization
• Transaction Profiling

Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive Analytics is the initial stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical data and prepares the data for further analysis. Data aggregation and data mining are used to organize the data help identify patterns and relationships. Querying, reporting, and data visualization needs to be applied to get more insights.

Diagnostic Analytics

Diagnostic analytics is a deeper look at data to attempt to understand the causes of events and behaviors. 

Big Data Analytics Job Trends:

Here are the job trends for Data Scientists and Big Data Analytics, according to Indeed.

 Job Demand and Supply

Let’s start with the job trend observed for this particular skill. According to itjobswatch, the demand for the Big Data Analytics skills is on the rise and continue to progress well. The below image proves this statement:

A new study by RJMetrics, on LinkedIn profiles have yielded the following insights:

• The number of data scientists has doubled over the last 4 years. This indicates an increasing demand for sophisticated data analysis skills, combining computer programming with statistics.

• At least 52% of data professionals have added data science skills to resume within the last 4 years.

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job growth for statisticians is expected to increase by 27% between 2012 and 2022.

• The high-tech industries like IT, Services industry, Internet and Software industries employs 44.9% of the data science professionals, followed by education (8.3%, probably employed mostly by universities), Banking and Financial Services (7.2%), and Marketing and Advertising (5.2%).

• The top ten companies employing data scientists are Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Booz Allen Hamilton, Nielsen, GE, Apple, LinkedIn, and Teradata.

Image source: Forbes

• According to RJMetrics’s report, the top skills are R, Python, machine learning, statistics, SQL, MATLAB, Java, statistical modeling, and C++.

Image source: Forbes

• Predictive Analytics professionals continue to remain in high demand due to the short supply of their quantitative analysis skills.

Pay Package for Analytics Skills

According to Indeed, a popular job portal, the average salary for Big Data Analytics professionals is 90% higher than average salaries of other job postings. The above image shows a positive salary trend for Big Data Analytics. Indeed reports the salary for Big Data Analytics professionals to be 110,000 USD per annum.

Itjobswatch, a U.K-based job portal, quotes the average salary for Big Data Analytics to be 65,000 GBP per annum. Doing a short math confirms that the average salary in both the nations are quite close to each other.

IT recruiters as well as companies agree that job titles like Data Scientist are hard to find, so they are willing to pay more. Now, data scientists are getting paid more than 200,000 USD per annum. Numerous surveys confirm that the increase in implementation of Data Science is further lifting the compensation for other data analytics professionals as well. Coupled with this, a study by O’Reilly states that data scientists can make more than $240,000 annually.

According to the Burtch Works Study on the salaries of Predictive Analytics Professionals, it is found that they continue to benefit from the increasing demand and short supply of skills. It was also found that the median base salary varies from 76,000 USD for professionals with 0 to 3 years of experience and goes up to 125,000 USD for those with 9+ years of experience.

Related Job Titles

Here are some of the job titles that are relevant to the Big Data Analytics skills:

• Analytics Engineer
• Big Data Scientist
• Data Integration Lead Architect
• Big Data System Administrator
• Data Scientist
• Big Data Architect
• Big Data Engineer
• Data Analytics Architect
• Big Data Analyst
• Business Intelligence Architect
• Solutions Architect

Look who is Hiring

Here’s a list of organizations that are looking for Big Data Analytics professionals:

• IBM
• Pearson
• Verizon
• JPMorgan Chase
• Honeywell
• AT&T
• Wells Fargo
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• United Health Group
• Ebay
• Uber
• Deloitte
• Shutterstock
• Fidelity Investments

Conclusion:

This is a fine time to upskill yourselves as the market predictions and the positive job trends give strong indications for continued focus on the Big Data Analytics. The Big Data Analytics segment is in dire need of professionals with in depth knowledge and skill. So get the right training to gain proficiency in the essential concepts that will make you and expert in Big Data Analytics.