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Why Should You Apply for Remote Data Science Jobs?

 

Remote jobs provide a work-life balance and the opportunity to learn versatile skills. You get to enjoy the freedom that you always dream of. Furthermore, remote data science jobs offer fabulous salaries and competitive benefits. There is a high demand for tech workers, so you won’t have to look hard to find the best job. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs will increase by 20 percent for Computer and Information Research Scientists.

The educational requirement for these jobs are not that high, but a bachelor’s degree in data science, computer science, statistics, or any related field is desirable. Getting a master’s or Ph.D. will increase the chance of hiring. Candidates without a formal degree can also apply if they can showcase the skills to work on a professional data science project.

I have a bachelors in Telecommunication Engineering and Masters in Technology Management which is quite different from data science, so how did I get my first remote job? I learned essential skills, took multiple courses, and got professional certification. In data science, your skills and experience matter more than education.

 

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What Are Data Science Remote Jobs?

 

You can apply for Data Analyst, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, MLOps Engineer, Database Manager, Business Intelligence (BI) Developer, and Data Architect. These remote data jobs require you to have:

• Best internet connection
• Ability to use multiple communication and productivity tools
• Ability to work alone and meet tasks deadline
• Understanding of technical terms and business use case
• Ability to switch from one task to another based on priority
• Ability to understand and solve data science problems using modern data stack

The list is long, but we have covered the most vital skills.

At the start, I only knew one or two things, mostly related to technical knowledge, and with time I got used to modern tools such as Slack, Monday, Zoom, Google Calendar and Docs, and VS Code extensions. Apart from productivity tools, you will learn to manage cloud applications, retrieve data using SQL, create data analysis reports, and learn the entire data ecosystem from data ingestion to production.

In day to day job, you will be assigned a task or multiple tasks, and by the end of the day, you need to provide a summary of success and failure. Most of the time, you are working alone and meet with the team on Zoom call after a day or a week. Your manager will not micromanage you, and you have freedom, and you will be also saving money and time on traveling.

 

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5 In-Demand Data Science Remote Jobs

 

In this section, we will cover five in-demand data science fields and describe the job role in a few lines. The average salary and top companies’ information is extracted from Indeed on 25th May 2022.

 

Data Scientist

 

• Average remote salary: $102,365 /year
• Top companies offering remote jobs: Selby Jennings, Airbnb, eBay, and Apple

The remote data scientist solves business problems using statistics and technical tools. The data scientist must have experience in accessing data using SQL, data analysis using Python or R, and building predictive models. This job is flexible and mostly depended on company’s requirements. Sometimes you might have to do data engineering, machine learning, and web developing tasks.

 

Business Analyst

 

• Average remote salary: $90,510 /year
• Top companies offering remote jobs: Uline, Twitter, and Wells Fargo

Business analysts work closely with stakeholders to find solutions to business problems. They conduct research and analysis using business intelligence tools (Power BI, Tableau). In the rear case, a company wants you to have experience in web scraping, data cleaning, SQL, Dashboarding, web applications, and understanding business terminologies (KPIs, ROI).

 

Data Analyst

 

• Average remote salary: $65,319 /year
• Top companies offering remote jobs: Citizens, Meta, and USAA

Data analysis is high in demand, and you need a basic understanding of statistics and analytical tools to get in. Your job will be running analysis on various data sources, creating a report, communicating critical information, and creating predictive models.

 

Machine learning Engineer

 

• Average remote salary: $111,385 /year
• Top companies offering remote jobs: eBay, Snap, and Capital One

It is the highly lucrative job in the tech industry, and some companies are offering a $300K+ salary with benefits. You get to test, train, build, and deploy machine learning models. You will also require to create a machine learning pipeline and automate the deployment system. The work you do will have a direct impact on the company’s growth.

 

Data Engineer

 

• Average remote salary: $115,602 /year
• Top companies offering remote jobs: Netflix, Meta, and LinkedIn

Data engineers can earn up to $300K per year by building and maintaining data pipelines. You get to create and manage databases, create ETL/ELT pipelines, distributed computing, automate pipelines, and monitor data integrity. The whole data team is depend on you to provide them with accurate and clean datasets.

 

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Where to Find Remote Data Science Jobs?

 

You can find full-time remote work on Job boards, the company’s website, social media, and data science communities. Remote work also gives you the ability to get part-time or freelancing jobs that pays the same. In this section, we will learn about platforms to find full-time and freelancing jobs.

 

Full-Time Jobs

 

You can create profiles and search for full-time work on job boards, such as Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, CodeRemote, LinkedIn, and Indeed. You can also join data science communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, and Slack to improve your chance of getting hired faster.

There are some hidden gems such as DataCamp Jobs, that helps data professionals find the best job. Instead of showing random jobs to you, it will select a few jobs tailored to you. You just need to create an account and fill in your preference, and within no time, you will start to get job offers from top companies such as Discord, Greenbox Capital, General Motors, and many more.

 

Freelance Work

 

You can find freelance work on Upwork, AngelList, Kolabtree, and Fiverr. Moreover, you can also find contract freelance work on the job boards by changing job types to part-time, contract, or temporary.

Similarly, we have a freelance hidden gem called Toptal. The platform has higher standards of only hiring the top 3% of freelance talent. It also requires you to have 2+ years of experience in data science. For experienced data professionals, this platform is a haven for providing high-paying jobs with benefits and flexible working contracts.

 

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Final Thoughts

 

Before you apply for remote jobs or freelance work, please make sure you have the required skills and experience.

To learn more skills, you can take online courses and tutorials, read books, start a pet project, and work on research.

To gain more experience, you can take part in Kaggle competitions, collaborate on open source projects, work for NGOs, apply for internships and apprenticeships, and temporary jobs.

If you have questions about a data science career, do ask me in the comments.

Best of luck with finding your next remote job.

 
 
Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is a certified data scientist professional who loves building machine learning models. Currently, he is focusing on content creation and writing technical blogs on machine learning and data science technologies. Abid holds a Master's degree in Technology Management and a bachelor's degree in Telecommunication Engineering. His vision is to build an AI product using a graph neural network for students struggling with mental illness.

 
Original. Reposted with permission.