4

While searching for a job for data analyst I found out that many jobs where data analysis is widely used do not include "data" or "statistics" in position title, for example credit specialist, business analyst and so on.

What are suitable job positions for people who want to analyze data? Moreover, how they differ?

sitems
  • 3,929
  • Trouble with this question is that without any limitation of its scope the answers are endless - stock controller, biochemist, quality engineer, archaeologist, &c. What's the point of it? – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Aug 04 '14 at 11:51
  • OK, so maybe "data analysis" is too broad. Then, we could restrict the question to "statistical data analysis". – sitems Aug 04 '14 at 12:01
  • Don't think that would help. I gave those examples because I know people with those jobs doing statistical data analysis. – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Aug 04 '14 at 12:04
  • To exclude positions like archaeologist or biochemist, we can restrict the question to jobs where domain expertise is not necessary and the only requirement is expertise in data analysis. – sitems Aug 05 '14 at 06:19

1 Answers1

9

Business Analyst

They are typically people who know a lot about the domain of business but also have some technical background. This doesn't necessarily involve statistical data analysis, but they have to analyze business, as the title suggests - which typically involves business data. They usually work closely with technical people (like programmers) and help them to understand the business goals, sometimes through data, sometimes through their knowledge of domain.

Examples

Risk Manager

It's about analyzing data to help decision makers make less risky decisions, they typically also need to know the domain to analyze - finances, insurance, medical stuff, etc. Here they should be able to do some statistical analysis, e.g. being able to spot extreme values, suspicious activities, fraud, etc.

Examples

Claim Specialist

It can be simply a risk manager in insurance. But it may involve other things, not related to Data Analysis per se.

Data Analyst

(Sometimes referred as Information Analyst) The title is clear. This person must be able to analyze data typically with statistical and data mining tools

Examples:

Marketing Analyst

Sometimes it's a data analyst who works for marketing

Examples

Business Intelligence Developer/Analyst

These people develop and manage data warehouses, but they also build reports for the business and build predictive models. Business Intelligence is a very broad area (see wiki) which includes OLAP analysis, data analysis and data mining

Examples

Data Warehouse Developer

(Sometimes ETL Developer). These people know how to collect data from different sources and put in to the common storage (data warehouse) so it can be analyzed. Typically it's a part of Business Intelligence, so they are also involved into building some reports, doing OLAP and data mining.

Examples

Data Engineer

This is just a fancier name for a Data Warehouse Developer. It has to do with the same things, including building some statistical models (occasionally)

Examples - https://vestajobs.applicantpool.com/jobs/11835-4863.html

The list is far from comprehensive, so feel free to suggest other things

Alexey Grigorev
  • 8,907