Data Roles in the 21st Century
Summary- This article provides insight for individuals interested in data-related roles. It describes different roles that have evolved over time, highlighting their importance in today’s vast data market. These roles include Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Database Administrator, Data Engineer, and Data Scientist. A Business Analyst reviews data or visualizations from a business operations standpoint and recommends ideas to the organization incorporating data-driven insights. A Data Analyst gathers raw data and turns it into insights through visual analytics. A Database Administrator manages database security, updates, reliability, and overall health of a database. A Data Engineer transforms raw data into useful information for data analysts and data scientists. Finally, a Data Scientist performs advanced analytics and tunes algorithms to extract valuable insights from the data. Each of these roles is critical in the data industry, and individuals interested in this field should consider which role aligns with their interests and skill set.
Data — The New Mineral
Data is everywhere. Are you interested in a data related role but just not sure where you might fit in? Well this article is for you to take a breather and gain some insight on some of the highlighted roles out there. As I take this moment to describe some roles in the data realm, I can’t help but think of how the world has changed overtime from a job market standpoint. The livelihood of an economy is driven by its productivity of resources for families. History shows us that mining has played a critical role in the development of economies. Some time ago, my father used to work in the mines and extract valuable minerals. In his community, more people were in the mines or farming, than were on a computer. In the mining industry, his role was to dig for mineral nuggets out of the dirt held miles within the earth, using heavy machinery and tools that required an understanding of their functionality. Part of the role was also mechanically fixing the heavy machinery when it broke underground.
In today’s vast workforce, we still dig, but for a different type of nugget, data/information. Data mining is the new form of technical and economical extraction that caters to societal development. Now, let’s have a look at some of the professional designations or the roles that have evolved over the years with the relevance of the new mineral, data. This is not to say that these roles did not exist during my father’s industrious market, but rather to highlight their importance in today’s vast data market.
Data Related Roles
Business Analyst — The world of business has become more competitive and is evolving day by day with the advancement of technology. There are many influential factors that can play a role in the growth and development of a business. With strategic and smart planning, these factors can be overseen and managed for the success of a business. And the data can be the key for strategizing the plans. As earlier mentioned, data will be the collection of valuable minerals and a business analyst is someone who has the knowledge to pick out the relevant and suitable objectives. Basically, a business analyst reviews data or visualizations from a business operations standpoint. Business analyst also bridge the gap to define business performance metrics and the organizational objectives. Their primary role is to identify and associate the information from the data and to recommend ideas to the organization incorporating data driven insights. Therefore, boosting the productivity of the organization not only from a financial perspective but from other business-related aspects.
Data Analyst — gathers raw data and turns it into insights through visual analytics. They use different reporting tools or analytical platforms to enable valuable information for decision-makers. A data analyst is someone who can interpret the data through mathematical and statistical concepts using computer programming (Sounds like a Data Scientist but it’s not). In comparison to a business analyst, a data analyst can work in different domains while extracting data nuggets from multiple organizational angles. They analyze and interpret the trends and patterns in the data resulting in both statistical conclusions and visualizations.
Database Administrator — As we are talking about the value of data, it’s important to mention about the management of data. Usually, the data is collected and stored electronically in a computer system or some server. This organized database system is used for collecting, storing, updating, and retrieving the data (a tiny version of a data warehouse). A database and its management have a crucial role in maintaining the quality of the analytical product or solution. In terms of mining, it’s more like a well-organized and structed warehouse for storing the minerals from the mines. And the one who effectively manages and maintains the database environment is known as Database administrator (DBA). The main role of a database administrator is to manage database security, updates, reliability, and overall health of a database. Their responsibility is to establish a better system to access the data for data analyst and others handling the data related tasks. In this case, data is considered a valuable resource, requiring appropriate configurations of privacy and accessibility, essentially doing the security dance to avoid unauthorized access.
Data Engineer — Data comes in many formats that are not readily able to be valuable for solutions. Like the raw minerals dug out from the mines that still need some form of manipulation process, the raw data is sometimes unsuitable for analysis. The raw data can be in structured, semi structured, and unstructured. Structured can be relative to the solution of the product consumption, otherwise, data needs to be cleaned and transformed for the required purpose. Data engineers are close to what my father did with the minerals. Data engineers literally mine dirty data from multiple sources and pipe it to a reliable data warehouse where it can be integrated with other solutions. Essentially, data engineers connect and transform the raw data and make it useful for data analyst and data scientist to manipulate. Data engineers are the one in charge of the data Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) processes.
Data Scientist — Some say this role is new but its not, its just become more widely known or trending considering the general availability of new-found computing power. Data scientist perform advanced analytics and tune algorithms to extract valuable insights from the data. When compared to the data analyst, data scientist prefers to explore more experimental and innovative methods for analyzing and interpreting the data. It’s more of a research-oriented role where scientists create and build data models in addition to the knowledge acquired from the existing technologies and analytical approaches. By tuning algorithms, a Data Scientist is valuable in ways they may not know yet. Even better, Data Scientists can automate the extraction of valuable insights, enabling organizations to streamline their product life cycles.
Conclusion
I’ve worn different hats within the data realm. My father may have been in a different job market, but we share similar roles of mining for resources. The roles above do not resemble the whole shift of economies but hopefully people can see themselves in different job interests within the data life cycle. As economies change, people will also need to adjust to the new way of digging for value and meeting the market demands. In today’s world, every digital marker is being recorded knowing or unknowingly. Data is all around us with additional devices being added or monitoring our homes, cars, and even our bodies. More to come on the exponential growth of data soon.
