A senior data scientist's role is to oversee and offer their experience and expertise, whenever necessary, to other medium and junior data scientists. They are also in charge of directing the flow of data, research, and digital construction within the team, data mining, and creating, maintaining, and improving new data-related software, projects, and programs.
Senior Data Scientists have a vast set of necessary skills, such as programming, statistics, mathematics, analysis, and economics. Depending on the industry within which the employing company works, they may also have to specialize in other things, such as SQL, deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) models, e-commerce, marketing, business, and data pipelines.
Generally, the employer will also ask for a Bachelor's in Data Science, Computer Science, or a similar field of study and at least a few years of experience. Some may even look for candidates with a Master's degree in any of these subjects.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior data scientist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $64.75 an hour? That's $134,682 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 16% and produce 5,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many senior data scientists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed logical thinking, math skills and detail oriented.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a senior data scientist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 15.3% of senior data scientists included python, while 12.0% of resumes included data science, and 10.2% of resumes included data analysis. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the senior data scientist job title. But what industry to start with? Most senior data scientists actually find jobs in the technology and finance industries.
If you're interested in becoming a senior data scientist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 8.9% of senior data scientists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 44.4% of senior data scientists have master's degrees. Even though most senior data scientists have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a senior data scientist. When we researched the most common majors for a senior data scientist, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or doctoral degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on senior data scientist resumes include bachelor's degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a senior data scientist. In fact, many senior data scientist jobs require experience in a role such as data scientist. Meanwhile, many senior data scientists also have previous career experience in roles such as research assistant or data analyst.