by Angela Guess
Seamus Breslin recently wrote in InsideBigData, “Big data has been the watchword for a while in IT, so it’s no surprise that data science skills are in hot demand and the job has perhaps mischievously been labelled as the ‘sexiest job in the 21st century’ by the Harvard Business Review. It’s a broad term, though, so what are the skills that are truly in demand in 2016? Basically any qualified person with data science skills should be able to find gainful employment, but crowdsourcing experts CrowdFlower Inc recently carried out a survey to find the skills that will really make a difference and help specialists write their own ticket when it comes to salaries. It analysed LinkedIn’s jobs postings and found that SQL specialists are the ones sitting pretty right now.”
Breslin’s list begins with, “SQL. Of course, there is strong demand for data science specialists with NoSQL and Apache Hadoop knowledge, there has been a growth spurt for those well verses in RDBMSes, but NoSQL is still way behind SQL and that is a skill that was specifically named on more than half of the listings that CrowdFlower Inc analysed on LinkedIn. So if you are looking to beef up your skills, look no further than SQL.”
The list goes on, “Python is another sector seeing a rise in demand. This programming language helps engineers create concepts with less amounts of code than Java or C++, so it is seen as more efficient, less bug prone and with potential to create clearer programs. Python is also becoming a standard feature of most operating systems and its widespread adoption means it is finding favour among programmers. It offers a hybrid of R’s data mining skills and a practical construction language that can build actual products quickly. It is also easier to learn.”
photo credit: Python