HYDERABAD: India is expected to have 1.5 lakh new job openings in data science in 2020, an increase of about 62 per cent as compared to 2019, said a report by Hyderabad-based ed-tech company Great Learning.
Currently, 70 per cent of job postings are for data scientists with less than five years of work experience. The top sectors where the majority of the data science job openings are — Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), energy, pharma and healthcare, e-commerce, media and retail.
The survey says that the BFSI sector offers the highest average salary to data science professionals, followed by manufacturing, healthcare, IT and e-commerce.
While those in the BFSI sector receive 13.56 lakh per annum, those in manufacturing receive 11.8 lakh per annum.
The sector has been affected by a massive shortage of skilled talent in the country.
In 2019, as per a study by Great Learning, close to 97,000 positions related to analytics and data were vacant due to dearth of qualified talent. Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder, Great Learning said, "With vast quantities of data being generated, the data science vertical is key to mining actionable insights for businesses."
While there has been an increase in the number of professionals upskilling in data science, the job growth has outpaced this number, leading to lucrative career opportunities for professionals who are willing to upskill and segue into a new role.
While the current analytics talent, especially at senior levels, have migrated from IT, the next generation will be expected to have specialised skills in data across all prominent industries making upskilling mandatory for a role in the new economy.