Demand for data scientists is booming and will increase Posted on : Feb 01 - 2019

Fueled by big data and AI, demand for data science skills is growing exponentially, according to job sites. The supply of skilled applicants, however, is growing at a slower pace.

It's a great time to be a data scientist entering the job market. That's according to recent data from job sites Indeed and Dice.

"The job of a data scientist has only grown sexier," said Andrew Flowers, an economist at Indeed, based in Austin, Texas, and author of the Indeed report. "More employers than ever are looking to hire data scientists."

The January report from Indeed, one of the top job sites, showed a 29% increase in demand for data scientists year over year and a 344% increase since 2013 -- a dramatic upswing. But while demand -- in the form of job postings -- continues to rise sharply, searches by job seekers skilled in data science grew at a slower pace (14%), suggesting a gap between supply and demand.

Similarly, data from technology job site Dice showed the number of data science job postings on its platform -- as a proportion of total posted jobs -- has increased about 32% year over year, and the site considers data science a "high-demand skill." Dice noted that the job postings are from companies in a wide variety of industries, not just tech.

Forrester Research analyst Brandon Purcell said demand for data scientists will only grow, as organizations increasingly rely on data-driven insights.

"To acquire and retain today's increasingly empowered customers, companies need to harness the insights in their data to personalize experiences at scale," Purcell said. "Data scientists are crucial in turning the massive amount of data companies capture into action. They've always been in high demand, but until recently, only large enterprises and digital natives were willing to make the significant investment. Now, almost everyone is."

The rise of AI and machine learning may also be a factor in the dramatic increase in demand for data scientists, Purcell said.

"Honestly, a lot of this is because of branding," Purcell said. "Many companies see data scientists as the key to embracing AI or machine learning, which are the hottest technologies out there."

Unfortunately, the reality is data scientists are only a small part of an organization's AI strategy, Purcell said. Data engineers who understand where data resides and what it contains are also necessary, as are DevOps professionals who can operationalize a machine learning model at scale.

The number of job postings for the related and much-talked-about skill of deep learning has more than doubled year over year, according to Dice. View More