IT organizations looking to transition to enable digital business are frequently tasked with turning their data into value. You don't need to look any farther than the 2016 InformationWeek Elite 100 to notice that most of the projects on the list included leveraging data in new ways.
It makes sense that professionals who can leverage data are in demand. This is true not only at tech companies, but across many industries, as financial companies, insurance companies, media companies, shipping companies, healthcare providers, entertainment companies, and others, all become data and software development companies.
Careers website Glassdoor's Economic Research group recognized Data Scientist as the Best Job in America for 2016 based on a few different criteria, including median base salary and the number of US job openings in January when the report was released. In the post releasing these results, the organization noted several trends revealed by the list, including the fact that 10 of the 25 best jobs are technology jobs.
[Looking to beef up your data and analytics bench? Read 9 Tips for Hiring Data Science Talent.]
"A decade ago, these positions were mostly within companies like Google and Facebook," the post said. "But today they're diffusing throughout the economy in industries like banking, retail, consulting and government. Any organization with a mobile app, online payments, or digitized data that can be turned into business insights is hiring these positions right now."
That means you don't have to live in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, or Boston to land a job in one of these fields.
"There has never been a better time to be a Quant," is how Burtch Works puts it. Burtch Works is an executive recruitment firm specializing in data scientists, predictive analytics pros, and other data analytics professionals.
If you have worked in an IT organization, maybe you are considering a move over to the data side of the house as jobs like data scientist are identified as being in great demand and having high salaries. But not all data jobs are the same. There are data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, predictive analytics professionals, business intelligence professionals, and more.
While some of these jobs may have overlapping skills and responsibilities, they also have distinctions. InformationWeek looked at several titles and how those titles were defined by analysts, consultants, and recruiters. We compared actual job listings to break down the titles and skills needed. The following pages present our list of titles.