Career Transition Into Data Science

A brief look at my transition into data science from engineering and what you need to focus on to make the same happen for you!

Transcript

1. Career Transitions and Rebuilding Career Capital Women in Data Science Lightning Talks Aug 26, 2019
2. Hello! I am Arushi Prakash @arushiuw linkedin.com/in/arushiprakash 2
3. From Chemical Engineering to Data Science Story of my career transition
4. Education 2010 – 2014. BS, Chem. Engg., BITS Pilani, India 2014 – 2018. PhD, Chem Engg., University of Washington Seattle (Minor in Data Science) Research 2014 – 2018. Application and development of physics- based simulations to understand proteins Data Scientist @ Zulily 2019 – Present. Development of recommendation engines for online shopping and customer engagement 4
5. Data Science and Data Scientists Who makes the pie?
6. … the number one thing about data scientists’ job description is that it’s amorphous. There’s no specific thing that you do; the work kind of embodies all these different things. You do whatever you need to do to solve a problem. - DJ Patil, Former Chief Data Scientist at the White House who coined the term ‘data scientist’ 6 https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/10-questions-for-the-nations-first-chief-data-scientist/
7. Majority transitioned careers 7 Computer Science Engineering Business/Economics Math/Stats Natural Sciences Data Science Social Science/Liberal Arts Other https://medium.com/indeed-engineering/where-do-data-scientists-come-from-fc526023ace Fields of Study Previous Jobs Consultant Academic Machine Learning Engineer Data Scientist Data Analyst Software Engineer Data Engineer Other
8. Making the best of your career transition into data science Where do you go from here?
9. Locate yourself on the map of technical skills Math & Statistics Knowledge Computing Skills Domain Expertise 9 https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-data-science-delusion Getting to the center § Online courses (Coursera, MIT, …) § Foundational books (ESL, ISL, …) § Study groups (WiDS, Galvanize, …) § Workshops (Meetups, Google, …)
10. Soft Skills Communication Ability to communicate difficult concepts with a broad audience. (Listen, speak-up, present, … ) Management Ability to manage time and people (up, across, and down). (Observe the best in the business, mentor, …) Network Presence of a network of peers, and mentors in the field. (Connect online and offline, engage broadly, …) 10 https://hbr.org/2014/04/as-you-start-your-career-focus-on-people-skills
11. Snippet of my efforts ▪ Technical skills – Workshops, Books, and Kaggle ▪ Communication – Blogging, Presentations, Talks ▪ Domain Expertise – Books, Podcasts 11
12. Thanks for listening! 12 https://xkcd.com/1838/ @arushiuw linkedin.com/in/arushiprakash