{"id":999882302,"date":"2013-09-20T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dice.npgdev.com\/hiring\/?p=999882302"},"modified":"2025-03-19T16:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T16:05:49","slug":"data-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dice.npgdev.com\/hiring\/recruitment\/data-scientist","title":{"rendered":"Tech Hiring Guide: Data Scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Return to Technical Hiring Guide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Is a Data Scientist?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Data Scientist is not a new role; however, with computing resources becoming more affordable and technology advancing more rapidly, more and more organizations are employing people in these roles to help them understand their data. A major goal of data science is to make it easier for others to discern meaningful conclusions from data sets. And depending on the organization, the \u2018customers\u2019 can change.  Sometimes data scientists are responsible for R&D, trying to research new business opportunities.  Other times they can be a part of marketing teams (usually called \u201canalysts\u201d) and are responsible for providing insights into strategy, such as product positioning or segmenting existing customers. This role can require a versatile skillset, depending on the needs of the organization.  Some roles require a thorough understanding of the challenges of processing very large data sets (i.e. “Big Data\u201d). Others require practical applications of exploratory data analysis, statistics, machine learning, and data visualization. Data scientists may have computer science backgrounds, but they can also come from math or analyst backgrounds. When hiring for this role, be sure to understand the amount of programming required (and in what languages), since coding abilities can vary among candidates, and may not always be necessary to be successful. Data scientists can also be more specialized, depending on the needs of the organization or a candidate\u2019s background. For example: data miners specialize in mining data looking for patterns or insights, and machine learning specialists focus on building and training models for repeatable analysis like artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions for Data Scientists:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n