Skills Required For a Financial Data Scientist Role The data scientist has become the hottest job title of the 21st century in the technological world. They are helpful for various industries, including healthcare, marketing, supply chain, and finance. A financial data scientist or a group of data scientists working in a corporation as a team would have expertise in the following four areas:
1. Data Analysis/ Quantitative Techniques Data analysis requires various skills, including statistics, econometrics, operations research, decision sciences, and predictive analytics. This, in my opinion, is the key element in data science. The data scientist must be able to clearly define the data analysis problem, comprehend the nature of the data, fill in any gaps in the data or make the right assumptions about it, choose the appropriate statistical models to apply to the data, and conduct the analysis using the appropriate technical tools, infer the analysis's conclusions correctly, and finally communicate the findings to the stakeholders. Learning time series analysis is one thing that needs special attention, given that the majority of financial data is time-series data. Data analysis is a self-contained field that may be used in any domain and with any type of data. To execute the analysis, you don't require any sophisticated tools or programming knowledge. However, this information is fundamental to your career as a financial data scientist.
2. Technical Knowledge Understanding the tools used to execute the data analysis is equally as significant as knowing statistical methods and data analysis. The way data scientists complete their work in this hot field is as follows. In most cases, a data set that needs analysis would be substantial and likely comprise hundreds of thousands of records. Both are manually performing the analysis and effectively using Microsoft Excel are not options. Data scientists would employ various tools and programming languages to carry out their duties because they work with vast volumes of data. (Refer to a data science course to know what other tools are used to perform data analysis.) Python and R programming are currently data scientists' two tools of choice. These programming languages are particularly well-liked for use in statistics, other types of data analysis, and data visualization. Both have benefits and drawbacks of their own. R was created with data analysis and statisticians in mind specifically. On the other hand, Python has quickly gained acceptance and has a sizable community and package support for its data analysis features. A data scientist should spend time learning both, as I have long advocated.
3. Data Munging An average and a pro data scientist differ in their ability to handle data. You'll also need to learn data munging and data cleaning procedures because the data is so large. Data munging, also known as data wrangling, is transforming raw data into a simpler format to use and analyze. Yes, you can accomplish this with the technologies at your disposal, but it takes a special kind of mental flexibility to be able to comprehend, build connections between, and combine correct and meaningful links between multiple data sources. You will draw on technology, your statistical expertise, and your experience to do this. Given the volume of data, this is perhaps the most time-consuming task for data scientists.
4. Domain Knowledge The fourth piece of the puzzle is possessing domain knowledge about the particular field of data you wish to analyze. The data scientist would be expected to comprehend how loans function, how banks manage loan portfolios, etc., for instance, if the study is on data relating to loans. Understanding financial analysis, economics, risk analysis, portfolio management, and learning about financial markets would all be advantageous in the context of a bank. As you study financial concepts, pay close attention to the math and data requirements associated with each idea. To sum it up, you can become a financial data scientist and be in a position to gain the most knowledge from financial data by combining your understanding of data analysis and statistical methods, technical capabilities to carry out the analysis, and financial domain expertise. If you’re looking for a natural resource to learn data science, Learnbay offers domain-specific data science courses in Mumbai in partnership with IBM. You will get a chance to choose multiple domain-based projects and gain experiential learning.