Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 87 | Page 75

FINAL WORD
As these careers are considered emerging , new courses are being added all the time . However , the rate at which graduates are entering the market is not meeting the rate of demand .
Data-related jobs have expanded exponentially in recent years , moving out of the proverbial IT basement and into almost all areas of business from finance to marketing and sales , to human resources , anywhere that data-driven decision making is increasingly business critical . Organisations rely on data professionals to manage enormous volumes of data and provide the insights necessary to meet customer demand while optimising internal processes .
Considering the somewhat technical nature of data specialist roles , when it comes to ongoing critical skills , exposure to some form of programming , anything like Python , SAS , Java , C ++, is essential .
Furthermore , Structured Query Language , SQL is a programming language for storing and processing information in a relational database , and probably the home language of the data world . As such , irrespective of the data specialist role , it will be in one ’ s best interest to master SQL .
Learning how to use some of the more prevalent data engineering , cloud engineering and data analytics technologies , such as Microsoft ’ s Azure and PowerBI , Amazon Web Services , AWS , IBM DataStage or Informatica , and SAS , can also empower data professionals to fit more easily into any organisation where a technology stack has been selected , and most
Left : Andreas Bartsch , Head of Innovation and Services , PBT Group
Right : Nicky Pantland , Data Analyst , PBT Group
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