In an economy where jobs are still scarce, it’s good to hear that the demand for skilled workers in Big Data is on the rise.

Nationwide, hiring slowed significantly in March with employers adding only 88,000 jobs, down from an average of 220,000 from November through February, according to a story in U.S. News. But in certain sectors, there are jobs that are going unfulfilled.

Big Data is one of those sectors.  According to Cloudera, as Hadoop continues to make inroads into the enterprise, there is a rapidly growing need for skilled data workers.  So, the company has decided to help develop this talent pool starting at the source – in the educational system.

This week Cloudera launched the Cloudera Academic Partnership (CAP), a program to equip leading universities around the world with the curriculum and training to offer Big Data courses for engineering and analytics students.

There is no question that demand for qualified Big Data professionals is increasing rapidly, while a shortage of trained workers is creating a major skills gap in the marketplace. The next generation of developers, administrators, and analysts can become the first to include new platforms like Hadoop alongside traditional databases and business intelligence tools,” said Ben Woo, managing director at Neuralytix Inc. “However, colleges and universities have historically not had the necessary resources to include these advance data technologies in their curricula, with the burden falling on employers to find existing certified professionals among the short market supply or retrain their employees to keep pace with technology. It is intelligent of Cloudera to foster development of this future workforce early and at the source, and it is a great service to professors and students around the world. The Cloudera Academic Partnership is the first of its kind, and the company is aggressively leading the charge in Hadoop education and innovation.”

The CAP program provides a number of benefits, including allowing teachers and students affiliated with CAP program institutions to freely download Cloudera training materials; deep discounts on other training materials developed by Cloudera University; and access to a variety of support services such as classroom tools, instructor forums, and the world’s largest Hadoop knowledge base.

CAP’s seven charter members include:

• Auburn University (Alabama)
• California State University, Los Angeles (California)
• Harvard University: Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (Massachusetts)
• Purdue University (Indiana)
• San Jose State University (California)
• Technische Universität Berlin (Germany)
• The University of Stavanger (Norway)

Educational institutions interested in the program can request an application. The CAP program also has more information online.

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The Data Analyst will have the following responsibilities:

• Provide strategic data insights, including extensive data exploration, abstraction, visualization, and interpretation of trends and patterns complex data sets.
• Glean insights from and distribute relevant industry data, communicating informed conclusions and recommendations
• Contribute to development of analytics, data and metrics products
• Transform data into actionable datasets to help customers reduce failure rates and support costs and increase revenue

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Last week Claire Cain Miller, a technology reporter for The New York Times, used the head to introduce her own story on the fast growing field of data science and the efforts on the part of the academic community to create a new crop of data scientists – whom she calls “…the magicians of the Big Data era.”

Magicians? Maybe. Sexy? We’ll leave that one for you to decide. Especially given the comment by Rachel Schutt, a researcher at Johnson Research Labs who taught a course on data science last semester at Columbia. Miller quotes Schutt as describing a data scientist as “a hybrid computer scientist software engineer statistician.”

Whether we’re dealing with sex symbols or supergeeks, the fact is that data scientists are in great demand. Miller reports that some recent graduates in the nascent field are pulling down six-figure salaries. And our educational system is taking note.

Universities can hardly turn out data scientists fast enough,” she writes. “To meet demand from employers, the United States will need to increase the number of graduates with skills handling large amounts of data by as much as 60 percent, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute. There will be almost half a million jobs in five years, and a shortage of up to 190,000 qualified data scientists, plus a need for 1.5 million executives and support staff who have an understanding of data. North Carolina State University introduced a master’s in analytics in 2007. All 84 of last year’s graduates in the field had job offers, according to Michael Rappa, who conceived and directs the university’s Institute for Advanced Analytics. The average salary was $89,100, and more than $100,000 for those with prior work experience.”

Miller describes data science programs at a number of educational institutions across the country and goes on to say, “Because data science is so new, universities are scrambling to define it and develop curriculums. As an academic field, it cuts across disciplines, with courses in statistics, analytics, computer science and math, coupled with the specialty a student wants to analyze, from patterns in marine life to historical texts.”

Pretty sexy stuff, wouldn’t you agree?

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The rise of Big Data has pushed companies to desperately start seeking IT professionals that can help in their database efforts. Though the Big Data market is still within the early adopter phase, major corporations beyond the .com industry are becoming more aware of the benefits of Big Data and the many software vendors that support it. According to Wikibon, a technology and research open source community, the Big Data market is estimated to reach $18.1 billion in 2013, an annual growth of 61%.

The demand for database management skills has expanded beyond Web or software companies and into industries such as retail, hospitals, and even government. These industries are seeking individuals with skills in managing and analyzing large data sets. And when it comes to the most desired skills, it should come as no surprise that NoSQL and Hadoop knowledge is highly desired.

Looking at the numbers

Not only are these skills in high demand, but companies are also willing to pay highly competitive salaries to get their hands on people with experience. According to a recent survey conducted by Dice, a site that specializes in IT jobs, salaries for employees who use Hadoop and NoSQL are over $100,000. This is significantly higher than the overall average IT salary of $85,619.

Big data related jobs in general have a higher than average salary. The average salary for big data related jobs is over $113,000. With large companies such as Amazon, Apple, Dreamworks, Nokia, and more looking for big data experts, it’s no wonder the average salary is so high.

For professionals interested in NoSQL databases, MongoDB skills top the list. As of the time of this writing, Dice shows the following number of jobs available for each of these popular NoSQL databases.

• MongoDB: 635
• Cassandra: 430
• HBase: 320
• Redis: 208
• CouchDB: 93

While MongoDB NoSQL has been at the top since around 2011, HBase is seeing great growth and is definitely on the rise. Openings requiring Hadoop skills are currently at 1,227 which outnumber the umbrella of NoSQL (1003).

These statistics are a strong indication that companies are in need of database management skills. This can be directly attributed to the growth and popularity of big data. Perhaps one of the best aspects of careers in data management is that they are recession-proof and are unlikely to decline.

The fact is that we depend on data and unless there is some technological revolution that eliminates the need for data store, analytics, software development, and all of the other tasks that require databases, job security will not be an issue.

Careers that require NoSQL and Hadoop skills

There is no shortage of uses for NoSQL and Hadoop in the business sector. Here are some of the specific careers that these skills are being put to use for:

• DBA: With an average salary of $81,000 according to Indeed, database administrators are in high demand right now. Companies hiring for DBA’s are looking for experience in handling a variety of database platforms such as MongoDB, Cassandra, and Oracle to name a few. The more experience you have, the more you can expect to earn. Senior DBA’s make an average of over $100,000.
• Data Architect: This position nets an average salary of $107,000. Data architects are required to have some experience in creating data models, data warehousing, analyzing data, and data migration. Experience as a DBA and with Hadoop is also highly desired.
• Data Scientist: Data science is a position that encompasses a variety of data driven skills. Data scientists gather data, analyze it, present the data visually, and use the data to make predictions/forecasts. The average salary for a data scientist is $104,000. Data scientists are currently in high demand and the demand will likely continue to increase.
• Systems Engineer: The position of a “Systems Engineer” is fairly broad and typically branches off to several other positions such as software development, data warehousing, and even some DBA work. The average salary for systems engineers is $89,000.
• Software/Application Developer: One of the more popular careers for people with NoSQL and Hadoop skills is software development. People with these skills can get ample freelance work or can launch their own startup if they have the entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to database management experience, you will also need programming skills. Software developers make an average salary of $107,000 and application developers average $93,000.

I should also note that many companies are still looking for people with relational database experience. But the growth of document oriented type databases has ignited the spark for NoSQL positions. The demand for people with Hadoop and NoSQL skills is not “on the rise”. It is here right now and IT professionals are highly encouraged to take advantage.

About the Author:

Matt Asay is Vice President of Corporate Strategy at 10gen, the company behind MongoDB NoSQL database. With more than a decade spent in open source, Matt is a recognized open source advocate and board member emeritus of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

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Don’t feel badly if you haven’t got the answer to this Big Data Turing test. The combination of recent advances in robotics with the rapid development of Big Data analytics has the potential to permanently change the working landscape, including automating many jobs that are now being handled by humans.

At least, that’s the draconian scenario presented by Bernard Marr, head of the Advanced Performance Institute, in a recent issue of the Smart Data Collective.

Marr’s ruminations began when he spotted a Google self-driving car on a Silicon Valley freeway. Now he sees examples of intelligent robots empowered by Big Data analytics all around us and says this is only the beginning.

For example, aircraft – both commercial and military – are being flown by automated systems. Robots are assisting – and in some instances supplanting – doctors. Hook up with a call center and you may find yourself in an animated conversation with a natural language system. Even, alas, journalists are vulnerable; for example, automated software has been developed to write sports stories or an overview of a company’s performance using Big Data and some super smart algorithms.

Put together robots with big data analytics and you have a powerful mix that could challenge us for most of our jobs,” Marr writes. “Big data analytics allows us to leverage large amounts of structured and unstructured as well as fast-moving data such as real time conversations on text, email and social media, video images, photos, data from location sensors in our phones, etc. Put this ability into a robot and they will not just threaten to replace lower-skilled jobs such as assembly line workers or supermarket personnel but now they have their eyes on doctors, pilots and journalists too!”

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Data is a powerful natural resource that if used wisely can drive U.S. economic competitiveness and lead to rewarding careers in the future dedicated to building a smarter planet,” said Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President, IBM Software Solutions Group.”

The IBM Client Center for Advance Analytics will create 500 new analytics jobs, with staff to be hired over three years. Read the Full Story.

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In this video, IBM big data evangelist James Kobielus explains what a data scientist does, the skill set that it requires, how they collaborate with subject matter experts to deliver important insights, and why the role is so important to the future of IT and big data. Read the Full Story.

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By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support Big Data, generating 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research. “In addition, every big data-related role in the U.S. will create employment for three people outside of IT, so over the next four years a total of 6 million jobs in the U.S. will be generated by the information economy.“

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