With all the buzz around the topic, many people are considering a career in Data Science. But what is the essential skill set for this field? Unfortunately, there isn’t an obvious answer because the knowledge Data Scientists possess is spread across multiple traditional disciplines. In this article, I address this question the best way I know how — by using Data Science. My goal is to discuss the **technical **and non-technical skills that are critical for success in Data Science.

Word cloud of prominent terms in Data Science jobs posting descriptions

I’ve posted the code for this analysis _here _— it can be used for any job title. Please share your findings!

The Data Science Workflow

Fortunately, I knew where to find the data — the data needed to answer this question can be found in public job postings. Using computer programming, I gathered 1000+ “Data Scientist” postings from a popular job site, a process commonly known as web scraping. Following the Data Science workflow, the next steps are analyze, visualize, and communicate. The result turned out pretty neat.

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