How are you building your dream data science team?
Just having the best mathematicians and programmers is not enough to make a great data science team. Building a great team of data scientists is an art.
Data science is not new in the industry and neither is its demand. But the change in the hiring landscape of data scientists has changed a lot of things. The huge demand for data science professionals, not just from the service providers but from every enterprise aspiring to have its own in-house data science team , has widened the gap between demand and supply
People with just the knowledge of databases have started calling themselves data scientists, which has created a low-quality workforce. And because of the widening gap between demand and supply, the wages or expectations are way above what can be called customary or normal.
In such a situation, how do you build your dream data science team?
Data Science is a combination of three skills: Computer Programming, Math & Statistics, and Domain Knowledge. A good data science team is people with varied years of experience in at least two if not all three skills. Above this, communication skills play an important role in the field of data sciences.
Even though data science is a coveted skill, in the recent past, this skill has gone through transformation, feels Sathesh Murthy, VP – Product Development (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) at Oracle. “Organizations are no longer looking for just strong data scientists, but instead are also looking for engineers with strong machine learning knowledge and skills, who are well versed in different AI models, well versed with different stages of MLOps, specialized in large scale training and those that can derive efficient and faster model inferencing,” he said.
Today, data science has become a new-collar job and these new collar professionals are not readily available. Most of the emerging new professionals have very good skills in computer programming and math/stat, but they lack domain expertise. Those who have spent some time in the industry, possess domain knowledge but do not necessarily have the other two. And this has made what Anand Mahurkar, CEO, Findability Sciences feels is an art. “Hiring data science professionals has become an art!,” he said.