Will AWS Certification Help Data Scientist?
Every discipline in IT has different certification and the debate about the worth of those certification will go on forever. Data Scientist cross over with needing skills in coding, operations, and math. However the Data Scientist isn’t the only person on the Big Data Team. The Data Engineer tends to build and maintain the application, leaving the data modeling to the Data Scientist. With the division of labor should a Data Scientist get an AWS Certification?
In this video I will explore the requirements for Data Scientist and even break down a job posting from AWS for a Data Scientist. Watch now to find out about AWS certifications for Data Scientist.
Transcript – AWS Certification Required for Data Scientist?
Hey, how are you doing today? My name’s Thomas Henson, and welcome to another episode of Big Data Big Questions. And so, today I’ve got a very special question that came in from a user that we’re going to tackle. It’s about a certification in AWS. So, do you need a Certification AWS to be a data scientist? And so, I’m going to tackle that question. And then, we’ll also, actually, going to look and try to see some job descriptions out there that are posted and see what those job descriptions are, and how I would approach it, and where my thoughts are on the AWS Certification for data scientists, and looking all into the job description, too. So, find out all about this, right after this.
So, today’s question comes in from YouTube. So, I’ve got the question here. Before we start and jump into the question, I do want to remind you, if you have any Big Data Big Questions and you would like them answered, put them in the comments section here below, throw it out on Twitter using the hashtag Big Data Big Questions, or go to our website and you can send me any kind of question that you want and I’ll try my best to answer them here for you. Also, make sure you subscribe and hit the notification button so you never miss an episode and never miss when your question gets answered all here on YouTube.
So, today’s question comes in from… It’s on my Cloudera Data Engineering Certification question. So, we’re following along with certification questions here. So, he says, “Hi, will AWS Certified Solutions Architects Certification help in my data science career path?” So, this question is a large, large topic, right? So, I’m going to have to take some assumptions here and think, “Okay, so this person is looking for a career path into data science.” So, I’m thinking that they want to become a data scientist. And so, what they’re saying is, “Hey, to become a data scientist, do I need to have the base level AWS Certification?” The quick and dirty answer is no, but that’s all going to depend, too. So, it’s going to depend on what the job description is. And towards the end of this video, will actually go through and look at a job description specifically from Amazon and see, does even Amazon require AWS Certification for their data scientist?
So, jumping back into the question though, let’s assume that we’re not talking specifically just about becoming an AWS Certification for a data science career path. Let’s say that it’s a more broad topic. Maybe, it’s going to be a data engineer or a machine learning engineer. So, with those topics, remember, those are more hands-on as far as the technology and implementing different packages, whether it be HDFS, Yarn, Kafka, Pig, Hive, doing some of the systems administration work, but also doing some of the hands-on a machine learning work where you get to maybe implement some of the algorithms and doing the tuning and coding there.
So, in those career paths, do you have to have the AWS Solutions Architects Certification? It’s going to depend there. So, the first thing I would do is, would find out what the basis of wanting to get that certification is. So, if you’re data engineer or a machine learning engineer and you know that you’re… Say, within your company, you guys are using AWS, you’re using AWS for your big data projects, then it’s probably going to make sense for you to have some level of understanding of AWS platform. And specifically, if you’re at a company where you’re required to get the AWS Big Data Certification, then yes, getting this lower level certification for the Solutions Architect Associate, that’s going to benefit you greatly because AWS now requires for the AWS Big Data speciality, that you have a baseline certification. The Solutions Architect is one that’ll get you covered.
I will say that I have the AWS Solutions Architect Certification Associate. I was looking into the Big Data Certification there for AWS and doing some of the tactical things there. It was a great certification to give you those baseline skills because with my skill set, I came in, didn’t really have an understanding of all the offerings for AWS. Most of the stuff that I’ve always worked with is On-Prem. Working at a company that’s using AWS or knowing that you’re applying for a position that requires that AWS Certification, I’m going to say that most the time you’re not really going to have to have that AWS Certification. A lot of deployments… And you can look with… Hortonworks and Cloudera, a lot of their different deployments if you look, they’re overarchingly On-Prem. So, not saying that it’s going to hurt you for AWS, but if you’re trying really quickly, and this is a tactical decision to, within the next six months be able to roll into a position, odds are in your favor that you’re not going to deploying it in AWS, or, Azure, or even Google at this point.
So, I would look into maybe getting the Cloudera Certification or getting Hortonworks and just having that baseline information for the machine learning engineer, for your data engineer. Especially, if you’re data scientist, I don’t think that you’re going to need that.
So, let’s go back in and actually look at the question about data scientists and see what the job description is there. So, for this, let’s look… I’ve just pulled in here an Amazon data scientist position. This looks like it’s an Alexa position. So, you can see what they’re looking for is somebody that’s probably going to be able to do some kind of machine learning, maybe some deep learning on voice recognition as it comes in from Alexa and be able to provide some kind of prescriptive, or maybe even predictive analytics on it. But you can see, the majority of what they’re asking for is, they’re looking for… Yeah, they’re looking for some scripting languages here, so, maybe, some Perl or Python, or just some familiarity with those.
But it’s real heavy in the high-level techniques, right? Like what are we doing with machine learning, like building up those models and specifically really having more math-based skills? If you even look at the description here, and when we talk about the technical degree, they’re not really looking for a technical degree like we would think about the computer science, information system, management information system, computer information systems. They’re saying, “Hey, it’s okay, if you have a statistics background, some kind of applied math, or even an economics background.” And so, this right here, just looking at this one, so this is Amazon, right?
So, at Amazon, not saying that they’re not using AWS platform, but I’m saying, for a data scientist, and if that’s specifically the role that you’re looking at, necessarily, you’re not going to have to have that AWS Certification. You probably want to be somewhat familiar if you’re applying at Amazon. But outside of that, I wouldn’t think you’d need the certification. Even Amazon’s not asking for it here.
So, that’s my two cents on the AWS Certification in data science. If you have any questions, any follow-up questions, go ahead and put them in the comments section below. Make you subscribe so you never miss an episode, and I will see you next time.