Dive Insight:

Data science roles remain particularly challenging to fill thanks, in part, to appeal across industries.

Finding data scientists is difficult because the position is more a form of literacy than a specific skill, according to Peter Wang, co-founder and CEO of Anaconda.

“There are some people we’re going to specialize in being data scientists, but if you’re a business, you’re going to want to get ready for everyone in the business being able to do some better levels of data reasoning,” Wang said.

Six in 10 hiring managers said data science and analytics roles will be the hardest to fill in the next six months, according to a separate study from Upwork.

Employers are responding to the need with dollars, salary trends show. Glassdoor placed the role of data scientist in the No. 3 slot on its Best Jobs in America list for 2022, commanding a median base salary of $120,000. Software engineers, ranked eighth, earn a median salary of $116,000.

An inability to extend data science literacy throughout the organization can lead to higher levels of attrition, Wang said.

“There’s a center of gravity that pulls towards this future [data] capability, and if the rest of the organization doesn’t understand the value of that, they’re just going to put up blockers,” Wang said. “That slows the data science team down and then guess what happens? Those data scientists get frustrated and they leave for some faster company.”

Read the full report here