An overview of different data professionals
I had to be careful with the section title, using “An overview of different data professionals” instead of “An overview of all data professionals” because there is no universally agreed upon list of data professionals. However, there are some well-accepted roles that I believe you will come across frequently:
- Data analyst
- Business intelligence (BI) analyst
- Data engineer
- Data scientist
- Database administrator
We will begin to examine each role and I must state that the explanations I give are not exhaustive or to be taken as authoritative. You should take them as my attempt to give a bird’s-eye view of what each role is about.
Data analyst
Twenty years ago, all data professionals fell into two broad categories – data analysts and database administrators. Data analysts are business units supporting professionals building reports and dashboards. In large organizations...