Blog_Banner_Asset
    Homebreadcumb forward arrow iconBlogbreadcumb forward arrow iconBig Databreadcumb forward arrow iconPlanning a Big Data Career? Know All Skills, Roles & Transition Tactics!

Planning a Big Data Career? Know All Skills, Roles & Transition Tactics!

Last updated:
17th Nov, 2017
Views
Read Time
7 Mins
share image icon
In this article
Chevron in toc
View All
Planning a Big Data Career? Know All Skills, Roles & Transition Tactics!

Do you know the skills and steps required to successfully transition to a Big Data career?

If you’re someone who doesn’t belong to the Big Data Industry yet but has a background which may have links to it – you may be thinking about a lucrative and long-term Big Data career.
If you’re aspiring to be a Big Data Engineer or a Team Lead/Tech Lead or even a Project Manager/Architect, there are some key technical skills required by employers in the Big Data Ecosystem. These skills vary for different Big Data Roles.

In this article, we will discuss the technical skills required by employers for different Big Data profiles. We’ll also discuss organisational expectations from different hierarchical levels and steps to make a successful Big Data career transition.

Essential Skills

Here are the essential skills needed for making a successful Big Data career transition:

  • Distributed Computing Big Data Environments

    • You should have hands-on skills in at least one of the many Hadoop Distributions (viz. Hortonworks, Cloudera, MapR, IBM Infosphere BigInsights). At this point in time, Cloudera distribution is the most deployed distribution.
  • Cloud Data Warehouses

    • Since there is an increased affinity towards moving from on-premise data warehousing solutions to cloud-based data warehousing solutions, you should have skills in technologies like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake. Redshift is a fully managed cloud-based petabyte-scale data warehousing solution.
  • NoSQL & NewSQL

    • You should have skills in some of the new emerging NoSQL technologies. For e.g. MongoDB (which is a document database) or Couchbase (which is a key-value store). Others like Cassandra and HBase are also popular. On the cloud, Amazon has specific databases like DynamoDB and SimpleDB (both key-value pair stores).
  • Data Integration & Visualisation

    • As you work on large-scale analytics projects, you will be ingesting data from multiple sources. Keeping this in mind, you should have knowledge of Big Data compliant integration technologies like Flume, Sqoop, Storm Kafka etc. Data Integration products like Informatica and Talend have also upgraded their capabilities to Big Data processing. In the world of visualisation, Tableau and QlikView are popular. They also integrate with other BI (business intelligence) reporting data stores.
  • Business Intelligence (BI)

    • Hands-on knowledge of Business Intelligence technologies is also helpful. There are several technologies available in BI. For e.g. IBM, Oracle and SAP have acquired BI suites. Microsoft’s BI stack is largely organically developed. Others like Microstrategy and SAS are also independent BI providers.
  • Big Data Testing

    • Big Data Testing is fundamentally different from traditional ETL and application testing because of the volume of data involved. The differences in test scenarios occur due to the velocity and variety of data. Also, in certain cases, execution of test cases requires scripting and programming skills (Pig scripts, Hive query language etc.).

Thinking of a Big Data Career? All the Skills, Roles & Transition Tactics Defined! UpGrad Blog

Ads of upGrad blog

Organisational Expectations and Hierarchical Responsibilities

An organisation has different expectations from different levels of the workforce:

  • Young Professionals (less than 5 years of overall experience)

    People in this age group mostly work as Big Data Engineers. As a Big Data Engineer, you are expected to be conversant with the above-mentioned technologies in the form of hands-on skills. As engineers, you would be responsible for building, testing and deploying the Big Data solutions.

Explore Our Software Development Free Courses

  • Mid-Career Professionals (5 to 10 years overall experience

    People in this age group work as a team or tech leads. As a leader too, you are expected to be conversant in the above-mentioned technologies but will also be responsible for taking design decisions, conducting regular checkpoint reviews of the deliverables and providing overall technical guidance to the developers.

  • Senior Professionals (overall experience of more than 10 years)

    • Enterprise Architects: Enterprise architects are expected to be familiar with the above-mentioned technologies along with having a holistic view of the Big Data Landscape. As an architect, you are expected to be trusted partners of the clients, advising them on the right architecture, transformation strategy and roadmap, tool selection and vendor evaluation.
    • Project Managers: For a PM, managing a Big Data project team requires cross-functional team management skills – data warehousing teams, Business Intelligence teams, statisticians, domain experts and data teams. Knowledge management is another key skill. It is important to understand and plug knowledge gaps in the team. Further, a Big Data PM is expected to understand Agile methodologies to deliver the projects.
What’s the Difference between Data Science, Machine Learning and Big Data?

Explore our Popular Software Engineering Courses

Transitioning to Big Data

The best way to make a Big Data career transition is by acquiring the relevant skills and then applying them in case studies/projects that simulate real-life scenarios. These could be part of a training program/education program, or through shadowing in-flight projects (or Proof of Concepts – PoCs) in existing organisations, wherever possible.

The following is a breakdown of the kind of activities practitioners can do in these case studies, according to the experience levels.

  • Young Professional (less than 5 years of overall experience)

    You should be looking to acquire the skills through training programs/PoCs and then apply them to projects that simulate real-life scenarios.

  • Mid Career Professional (5 to 10 years overall experience)

    You should drive technology solution discussions, coming up with designs and conducting reviews of work products and guiding teams during the case studies.

upGrad’s Exclusive Software Development Webinar for you –

SAAS Business – What is So Different?

 

  • Senior Professionals (overall experience of more than 10 years)

    You should be the one who kick-starts the execution of the case studies, acquiring a clear understanding of functional requirements, developing the solution strategy to meet project requirements within stipulated timelines and developing the project charter (PM roles) and overall technology solution (Architect roles).

Thinking of a Big Data Career? All the Skills, Roles & Transition Tactics Defined! UpGrad Blog

This takes us to the question:

In-Demand Software Development Skills

What should you look for in a good Big Data Program or Course?

The course should provide the right enablers for the participants to complete a Big Data career transition into these roles.

The following are the 3 key expectations you should have of any course:

  • Technical skills:

    The course should impart the above-mentioned skills through a suitably designed curriculum.

  • Cloud platform:

    You should get access to a cloud platform with the relevant software and experiment with it.

  • Case studies/Projects:

    Ads of upGrad blog

    The course should have a simulation of real-life scenarios as explained above, where participants in the various categories can play out the roles as explained above.

Read our Popular Articles related to Software Development

If you are interested to know more about Big Data, check out our Advanced Certificate Programme in Big Data from IIIT Bangalore.

Learn Software Development Courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Executive PG Programs, Advanced Certificate Programs or Masters Programs to fast-track your career.

Profile
Sourabh Mukherjee is a veteran with more than 20 years of experience in the Big Data and Data Management Industry. Currently, Sourabh is working for a multinational consulting firm in a leadership position. In the past, he has helped several leadership positions in companies like IBM and Cognizant. He has been helping clients across the globe with the implementation of their digital and data strategies.
Get Free Consultation

Select Coursecaret down icon
Selectcaret down icon
By clicking 'Submit' you Agree to  
UpGrad's Terms & Conditions

Our Popular Big Data Course

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1Why should you consider taking a Big Data course?

Big Data extends its benefit in numerous sectors. Moreover, data-driven decisions are generally more effective than human-generated decisions. With Big Data, it becomes easy for organizations to identify the latest trends and look out for patterns that draw benefits for the future. Furthermore, it also contributes to detecting customer behavior by analyzing their inclination toward products or by optimizing their marketing campaigns. Secondly, Big Data creates a foundation for businesses that want to regulate Artificial Intelligence projects. AI, at present, is in huge demand, and Big Data helps companies work with AI. Third and final reason to learn Big Data is due to its demand. Big Data skills such as Business Intelligence, Big Data testing, Cloud Data Warehouse, and Artificial Intelligence are in rising demand lately.

2What is the annual income of various job titles related to an Enterprise Architect?

An enterprise architect holds an overall experience of more than ten years. Considering their experience, they are eligible to draw an annual pay of INR 28,51,044/year. These numbers might vary depending on the region one belongs to. The other job titles linked to an enterprise architect are System Architect, with an annual base pay of INR 22,64,156. An Infrastructure Architect receives a yearly income of INR 20,85,675. As for a Software Architect who draws a minimum salary of INR 25,81,400. Finally, a Project Architect makes INR 8,64,071/year.

3How can Big Data help you expand your growth?

Taking up a course or program in Big Data will prove highly beneficial and rewarding. In general, Big Data and Data analysis, are fun subjects that expose you to solving puzzles, enhance your analytical skills, reasoning ability, and so on. Statistics, problem-solving, and visualization are some of Big Data’s domains that will be helpful in the long run. Studying Big Data for three-six months will be enough to put Big Data to your everyday use.

Explore Free Courses

Suggested Blogs

Characteristics of Big Data: Types & 5V’s
5175
Introduction The world around is changing rapidly, we live a data-driven age now. Data is everywhere, from your social media comments, posts, and lik
Read More

by Rohit Sharma

04 Mar 2024

50 Must Know Big Data Interview Questions and Answers 2024: For Freshers & Experienced
6878
Introduction The demand for potential candidates is increasing rapidly in the big data technologies field. There are plenty of opportunities in this
Read More

by Mohit Soni

What is Big Data – Characteristics, Types, Benefits & Examples
184569
Lately the term ‘Big Data’ has been under the limelight, but not many people know what is big data. Businesses, governmental institutions, HCPs (Healt
Read More

by Abhinav Rai

18 Feb 2024

Cassandra vs MongoDB: Difference Between Cassandra & MongoDB [2023]
5454
Introduction Cassandra and MongoDB are among the most famous NoSQL databases used by large to small enterprises and can be relied upon for scalabilit
Read More

by Rohit Sharma

31 Jan 2024

13 Ultimate Big Data Project Ideas & Topics for Beginners [2024]
99314
Big Data Project Ideas Big Data is an exciting subject. It helps you find patterns and results you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. This skill
Read More

by upGrad

16 Jan 2024

Be A Big Data Analyst – Skills, Salary & Job Description
899598
In an era dominated by Big Data, one cannot imagine that the skill set and expertise of traditional Data Analysts are enough to handle the complexitie
Read More

by upGrad

16 Dec 2023

12 Exciting Hadoop Project Ideas & Topics For Beginners [2024]
20582
Hadoop Project Ideas & Topics Today, big data technologies power diverse sectors, from banking and finance, IT and telecommunication, to manufact
Read More

by Rohit Sharma

29 Nov 2023

Top 10 Exciting Data Engineering Projects & Ideas For Beginners [2024]
39820
Data engineering is an exciting and rapidly growing field that focuses on building, maintaining, and improving the systems that collect, store, proces
Read More

by Rohit Sharma

21 Sep 2023

Big Data Architects Salary in India: For Freshers & Experienced [2024]
899164
Big Data – the name indicates voluminous data, which can be both structured and unstructured. Many companies collect, curate, and store data, but how
Read More

by Rohit Sharma

04 Sep 2023

Schedule 1:1 free counsellingTalk to Career Expert
icon
footer sticky close icon