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Data Scientist Duties, Skills & Responsibilities: a Guide for Employers

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Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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When hiring Data Scientists, it’s important to properly describe the job opening with the duties, skills and responsibilities of the role. We’ve compiled a guide to Data Scientist Duties, Skills & Responsibilities using data from actual job postings on Indeed.

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Popular Data Scientist Duties and Skills

Here are some commonly found skills and other specifications in job postings for Data Scientists.

Python

  • Definition : An interpreted, open-source programming language.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 72.1% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Machine learning

  • Definition : Knowledge of or experience with machine learning. Machine learning may incorporate algorithm development, training algorithms with sample sets, or using machine learning results for data analysis.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 64.9% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

SQL

  • Definition : Programming language used for interacting with data held in a relational database.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 45.1% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

R

  • Definition : A software environment and language for statistical computing.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 37% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

AI

  • Definition : Experience with artificial intelligence, or the use of machines which can learn and adapt as they perform computing tasks.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 5-6
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 24.7% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Doctoral degree

  • Definition : Terminal degree awarded by universities or colleges at the completion of an advanced, research-focused course of study. A Doctoral Degree enables the holder to teach at high levels in universities or colleges, or to work in other specialized professional roles.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 24.2% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Spark

  • Definition : An open-source data processing engine for running analytics.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 22.5% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Analytics

  • Definition : Experience or skill with finding and analyzing patterns in data.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 20% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

AWS

  • Definition : Experience with Amazon Web Services, a platform which provides a wide array of information technology services to individuals or organizations. Services include but are not limited to cloud computing, data storage, database services, business applications, and content delivery.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 20% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Natural language processing

  • Definition : Experience with Natural Language Processing, a process that focuses on interaction between computers and human languages.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 16.2% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

TensorFlow

  • Definition : An open-source software library used for numerical computation for building machine learning applications.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 15.4% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Java

  • Definition : A compiled programming language and computing platform. Runs mainly on servers.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 15.3% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

SAS

  • Definition : Project management and business analytics software developed by the SAS Institute.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 13.5% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Data mining

  • Definition : Skill in data mining techniques used to identify patterns in large amounts of data.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 13.4% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Hadoop

  • Definition : A framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 5-6
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 11% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

ETL

  • Definition : Skills, knowledge, or experience related to ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 9.2% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Big data

  • Definition : Experience using large amounts of data to extract and analyze insights about products, populations, or services.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 5-6
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 7.1% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

C

  • Definition : A general-purpose programming language designed for cross-platform programming.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 6.1% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Bash

  • Definition : A command line interpreter and commonly used Unix shell.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 1% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

Database design

  • Definition : Experience or skill with designing database systems including determining the data to be stored, classifying it, and identifying interrelationships.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 2-3
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 0.5% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.

VBA

  • Definition : A programming language developed by Microsoft for use within existing Microsoft applications, such as Word and Excel.
  • Years of experience most commonly required: 7-8
  • How common is it? This skill is found in 0.2% of Data Scientist job postings on Indeed.
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    Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.