Data science uses processes, algorithms, scientific methods and systems to acquire knowledge and insights in the form of structured and unstructured data, with the help of mathematics, statistics and Machine Learning to collect data to then apply the gained knowledge and actionable insights to any given application domains.
In simple words, its a process of using advanced technologies to understand a given set of data to help in better decision making, cost cutting, improve efficiency, business growth and in improving marketing and sales numbers, leading to a gain in competitive advantage.
The processes on the route to transforming data into useful information, includes steps such as data mining, data visualization, data clustering, data summarization and data modeling. The next step after all the earlier mentioned, is data analysis which is done with the help of business tools, to finally make data easily understandable to businesses.
In this blog, we will learn more about data scientist salary based on different factors. Before that, we will also learn more about who a data scientist is, what are their roles and responsibilities, the skills required, frequently asked questions, and more.
- Who is a Data Scientist?
- Data Science Job Description
- Data Scientist Salary
- How to become a Data Scientist?
- Responsibilities of a Data Scientist
- Key Reasons to Become a Data Scientist
- Companies that hire Data Scientists
- A day in the life of a Data Scientist
- Data Scientist FAQs
Who is a Data Scientist?
Data scientists are professionals who source, gather and analyze huge sets of data. Today business decisions are powered by insights drawn from analyzing data so you can imagine how crucial data scientists are for any organization. Data science roles typically demand a background in computer science, mathematics, and statistics. Apart from modelling and processing structured and unstructured data, data scientists also interpret the findings into actionable plans for stakeholders.
Since a large part of a data scientist’s job requires them to communicate data insights to other departments, they need to have exceptional communication skills and interpretative skills. Industry knowledge and contextual understanding are also required to make accurate observations and meet business challenges.
A Data scientist’s responsibilities are not limited to data processing and analysing. Data science roles vary from company to company, creating overlaps between data science and business analysis roles. Expert data scientists usually come with years of experience and expert knowledge of multiple industries. Given how they work with multiple stakeholders and facilitate crucial decision making for the company, data scientists are one of the most well-compensated professionals in the market.
Data Scientist Job Description
We are looking for a data science expert to model and analyze huge amounts of data and draw inferences to support our product and services team. The ideal candidate will be required to collaborate with marketing, sales, and product teams to aid business decisions. He/she should be efficient in handling large amounts of data and extract valuable business insights with product and process optimization in mind. They should be adept in using tools and platforms for data mining, creating simulations and analyzing. Candidates with machine learning skills will be preferred.
Data Scientist Salary in India
According to LinkedIn, the average data scientist’s salary is ₹8,50,000. A mid-level data scientist can earn around ₹10,00,000 per annum with 5 to 8 years of experience. Early-level data scientists with 1 to 2 years of experience get around ₹6,11,000 per annum.
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Data Scientist Salary by experience level
In this section, we have listed a data scientists salary based on their experience level.
| Experience Level | Salary |
| Beginner (1-2 years) | ₹ 6,11,000 PA |
| Mid-Senior (5-8 years) | ₹ 10,00,000 PA |
| Expert (10-15 years) | ₹ 20,00,000 PA |
Data Scientist Job Title
| Job Title | Salary |
| Data Scientist | ₹ 8,00,000 PA |
| Data Science Engineer | ₹ 9,76,133 PA |
| Data Analyst | ₹ 6,02,784 PA |
Data Scientist Salary by Company Size
| Size | Salary |
| Microsoft | ₹ 1,500,000 PA |
| Accenture | ₹ 10,55,500 PA |
| Tata Consultancies | ₹ 5,94,050 PA |
Data Scientist Salary by Skills
| Skills | Average Salary |
| SQL | ₹494712 |
| Statistical Analysis | ₹491723 |
| Data Analysis | ₹441240 |
| Microsoft Excel | ₹389736 |
| Microsoft Office | ₹356502 |
Data Scientist Salary by Location
| Location | Salary |
| Mumbai | ₹ 7,88,789 |
| Chennai | ₹ 7,94,403 |
| Bangalore | ₹ 9,84,488 |
| Hyderabad | ₹ 7,95,023 |
| Pune | ₹ 7,25,146 |
| Kolkata | ₹ 4,02,978 |
How to Become a Data Scientist?
Data science demands knowledge of multiple tools to extract information from data and answer various kinds of operational questions. However, even before an aspiring data scientist can master those tools and techniques there are few basic skills that they need to acquire since those lay the foundation for a promising career in data science.
- Problem Solving Intuition: A data scientist must have a natural inclination towards problem-solving. They need to be able to identify and define a problem and lay out a structure for approaching the solution.
- Statistical Knowledge: Statistics is vital for data scientists. Familiarity with mathematical and statistical concepts like linear algebra, calculus, statistical distribution, probability theory, statistical significance, likelihood estimators and more is required for data scientists. They also need to identify valid techniques and approaches from lesser effective ones while working on any particular project.
- Programming Language: Programming knowledge is crucial for data scientists as it can be used to manipulate data for extracting exact insights. Two of the most commonly used programming languages, Python and R help data scientists to clean and process data. They can also be used to scrape websites for data and use APIs. Python and R have a number of packages available for numeric and scientific computing, making it easier for data scientists to apply machine learning algorithms on data sets.
- Data Wrangling: Data needs to be cleaned before data scientists can analyze it. Data imperfections can make analyzing a tough job and hence it becomes important for data scientists to take care of it. Data imperfections like missing values, inconsistent date formatting, and string formatting need to be fixed for accurate data analysis. Data wrangling is especially relevant for fast-growing companies where formatting data might be an issue.
- Data Extracting and Transforming: Using multiple data sources can lead to having differential formatting structures. Data scientists need to extract data properly and transform it into a uniform format and structure before analyzing or querying it. A background in ‘Extract Transform and Load’ can help aspiring candidates to structure and analyze data efficiently.
- Data Visualization and Communication: Data visualization is extremely important to help stakeholders interpret data inferences. Data scientists are often required to communicate the data inferences to other teams and help them make business decisions accordingly. Data visualization helps in representing the information for both technical and non-technical audiences. Hence, data scientists must be knowledgeable in visualization tools like Matplotlib, Tableau, d3.js, ggplot and more.
- Database Management: Data scientists are often required to don multiple hats, taking care of the end-to-end database management system. They should be familiar with the database management programs to edit, index and manipulate databases. Database management systems help users to receive data in a specific format. It also helps users store and retrieve data according to their requirement.
- Machine Learning: Machine learning and deep learning have emerged as preferred skills to have for data scientists. Machine Learning techniques like random forest, KNN, ensemble methods and more can help data scientists to train and model data to fit a particular format. ML algorithms can come in handy while working on custom data.
- Pick up Math and Statistics Skills : If math and statistics are the fundamentals of data science, machine learning follows closely. Learn the basics of machine learning since it is used for many data science applications like creating forecasts and data modelling patterns. Knowledge of machine learning will enable you to design and use algorithms for data modelling.
- Learn Programming : One of the many requirements of data science is programming so you need to brush up your coding skills. Languages like Python, R, SAS help data scientists to read and analyse data sets. Thanks to its flexibility, Python is one of the most widely used programming languages in data science. For querying, you will benefit from learning SQL.
- Data Munging and Reporting : Aspiring data scientists should also learn data munging and reporting. While data munging helps to identify and discard redundant data, reporting ensures that it’s put into readable and actionable format.
Responsibilities of a Data Scientist
- Assess new data analyzing tools and prepare reports on their effectiveness
- Develop custom data models and algorithms to analyze product specific data
- Mine and analyze data to optimize and improve products, marketing techniques, business strategies and more
- Work with stakeholders to identify and leverage data optimization opportunities
- Create predictive modelling to improve product engagement, revenue generation, and stakeholder communication
- Build A/B testing framework and run tests for quality check
- Develop tools and processes for performance and quality management
- Coordinate with stakeholders to implement new tools and monitor outcomes
Key Reasons to Become a Data Scientist
There are many reasons to become a data scientist, but some of the most common reasons include wanting to work with data to find trends and patterns, wanting to use data to help make decisions, and wanting to improve business outcomes. We have listed a few other reasons why you should become a data scientist below:
- High Paying Job
- Growing Demand
- To make sense of data
- To find hidden patterns and relationships
- To make predictions
- To help organizations make better decisions
- To improve products and services
Companies that hire Data Scientists
There is a growing demand for data scientists and most companies, be it a large corporation or a startup, are looking to hire individuals with data science skills. Some of the companies that hire data scientists are: Accenture, TCS or Tata Consultancy Services Limited, Mu Sigma, Amazon, IBM, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and HCL.
A Day in the Life of a Data Scientist
A typical day in the life of a data scientist starts like that of any other professional – by checking and replying to emails. S/he then connects with the rest of the team for a quick update on all the major tasks at hand. With businesses going global today, teams often function across geographical boundaries and timelines. Data scientists connect with all the stakeholders to ensure everyone’s work is in sync. Depending on the role, a data scientist might spend 40% of their time on research and simulation of data.
They spend their day developing and testing algorithms to simplify data problems. The analysis results are kept confidential or shared with the stakeholders depending on the algorithm. 30% of their time goes in communicating with other teams and building relations across departments to seek new projects.
This process is crucial not only to identify potential problem areas and scopes of improvement but also to provide a comprehensive view of operations. They spend the remaining 30% of their time performing data analysis and reporting. On an average day, they can be found using tools and techniques like predictive models, forecast models and data mining for subgroups and trends within a given dataset. Tableau, Python and R are also some of the commonly used tools and programming languages.
Data Scientist FAQs
The income offered to a data scientist may vary based on several factors including years of experience, job location, skillset, etc. However, the average salary in India is ₹8,50,000.
Data scientists are in high demand as the need for data scientists is growing rapidly. The highest salary offered to a data scientist can go up to ₹25.3 Lakhs per annum. The job role of a data scientist is one of the highest paid job profiles in the current job scenario.
Since data science is a growing field, it is quite challenging to enter. The competition is high, but the good part is, there are a lot of requirements too. If you acquire the required skills and position yourself well, you can enter the field in an easier manner.
Due to the long working hours, the role of a data scientist can become quite difficult and stressful at times. However, this may vary from person to person or role to role.
A few of the popular skills to become a data scientist are:
– Python
– Data Science
– Deep Learning
– Machine Learning
– SQL
It depends on the hiring organization, however, most companies do not require you to have a degree in data science as long as you have the skills for you to qualify as a data scientist. Professions such as doctors and lawyers have quite stringent requirements, but data scientists don’t have any such requirement as it has a wide range of applications. Education is relevant, but data scientists can be from a variety of backgrounds such as computer science, information technology, physics, mathematics.
Courses like Great Learning’s Data Science Course with Gen AI , prepare a candidate for all kinds of data science roles and challenges. It starts by familiarizing a candidate with the basic programming and statistical models and gradually teaches them fundamentals of the domain. It also allows them to work on capstone projects to understand industry insights and practices.
