Data scientist: who he is and what he does
Who is a data scientist and what does he/she do? In the last few years, a new professional figure has emerged to play a key role: the data scientist. The data scientist is an expert who can extract insights from massive amounts of data in order to help define or meet specific needs and business goals.
But what does it actually do?
There are two types of data to analyze;
- Structured data that can be easily sorted, read and organized automatically with a system. This group includes, for example, data collected from services, products, and electronic devices, such as website traffic data, sales figures, bank details, or GPS coordinates collected from a smartphone.
- Unstructured Data. This is the fastest growing form of Big Data. This is data from people's input, such as customer reviews, emails, and social media posts. This data is harder to sort and classify in an automated way.
For companies, it is getting more and more important to take advantage of this last type of data to be able to define and reach new goals, able to increase competitiveness and turnover.
How much does a data scientist earn?
The value of the data scientist profession for companies is also evident from the remuneration reserved for this category. The average salary is €39,000 gross per year, about €2,000 net per month. This is a salary that is €450 higher (+29%) than the average monthly salary in Italy.
The salary of a data scientist can start from a minimum salary of 27,000€ gross per year, while the maximum annual salary can exceed 110,000€ gross.
The importance of data scientist for companies
In a survey conducted between 2019 and 2020 among marketers with global responsibilities related to media and programmatic marketing, 37% of respondents said the lack of data scientists to analyze data was one of the top challenges they faced during the period.
In fact, across all industries, organizations are increasing their hiring of data scientists: from 2020 to 2021, the percentage of organizations that employed 50 or more data scientists increased from 30% to nearly 60%. On average, the number of data scientists employed in an organization grew from 28 to 50.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), jobs in this field will increase by 11% by 2024.
