A new set of career and qualification guides have been produced by Skills Development Scotland in partnership with The Data Lab, ScotlandIS and Scottish Enterprise to showcase a range of possible career options for Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI).
With COVID changing the employment landscape many people might be thinking about changing career, polishing their skills or learning something new. From the start of lockdown one of the things that has remained very clear is that our everyday lives rely on data – from government decision-making to accessing reliable news to shopping online.
The jobs market is still very uncertain, but some sectors are beginning to bounce back. After healthcare, the technology sector posted the highest number of vacancies in the three months from June. But the importance of data skills is being recognised in a large number of job roles outside of this sector too – particularly as companies adopt new technologies to help keep their businesses sustainable by moving services online and having staff work from home. Common feeder roles into Data & AI can include software development, financial and risk analysis, electrical and mechanical engineering, digital marketing, security and law enforcement.
New Data & AI Career Resources
But for people considering a career in data, what are the options and where do you start? It’s not about everyone becoming a Data Scientist – which is a very specialised role – there are a myriad of different Data & AI related job roles and far more opportunities out there for Data Analysts or Data Engineers, and we need to ensure that we have enough talented people to fill these opportunities.
Which is why I was pleased to be involved in the production of a new set of Data & AI career resources produced by Skills Development Scotland in partnership with The Data Lab, ScotlandIS and Scottish Enterprise that dig deeper into some of the common Data & AI job roles found in Scotland, as well as the skills and qualifications you could focus on for each. There are also guides for Software Development careers.
We hope these guides will help to demystify Data & AI career options for anyone considering a job in this area. As part of my work with the Data Skills for Work programme, we will be taking this a step further by creating a set of interactive learner journeys for people interested in upskilling or reskilling to become data professionals, with up to date information about courses offered by colleges, universities and other training providers. If you want to be kept up to date about this project, please join the Data Skills for Work mailing list.
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We all need data skills to prepare for the jobs of the future