Data science is flourishing in Switzerland and the demand for data specialists is high and rising. But do regional differences exists and can we identify certain clusters or hot spots? Current job openings may indicate the growth in data science jobs in each region. We downloaded all openings on Indeed to obtain a rough idea of where in the country data science is booming.
We proceeded by scraping all Swiss job listings for data science related keywords (Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Big Data, Machine Learning) in May 2017. We then analyzed the locations of the 848 job postings we found. Figure 1 plots the location of each job posting on a map of Switzerland.
Big centers exist in Zurich, Basel and Geneva, smaller ones in Bern and Lausanne. Zurich has a clear lead with 303 job ads, which is hardly surprising given the city’s size and the presence of ETH as well as large banks. Basel follows with 88 job postings, where the pharmaceutical industry is driving demand for data analysis skills. An interesting “data science coast” extends along lake Geneva: Apart from Geneva and Lausanne, many firms recruiting data scientists are located in villages along the lake, which reflects the regional economy’s high technological level.
Interested in analyzing jobs on Indeed? You can access the jobs through their API. The jobbR package on R is helpful; similar tools exist for Python.
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