Do you usually work in a team in your company and how does the composition of a data science team look like?
It depends on the size, content and complexity of the projects. In bigger projects most of the time the team is composed of different people with different skills including a Project Manager, External/Internal BA, Internal Data Analysts and Scientists, Developer and Qlik Consultant like me. On the other in smaller project I am responsible for the whole project life cycle supported by the customer’s internal staff.
Which programming languages and tools are you using in your job?
Currently I am working with the following programming languages and technologies:
- Qlik AQL Scripting language and Set Analysis for standard Qlik BI Projects
- HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap and other UI frameworks (e.g. LeonardoUI) for frontend development
- Visualization libraries (e.g. D3, Picasso.JS) for extension development
- JS (Angular), JQuery, Typescript, Node.JS, C# for embedded analytics scenarios
- R and Python
Which skills would you regard as vital for your job role?
Apart from always being up-to-date with the current and emerging technologies, which is one of the key points to be successful in our job, is the ability to listen, understand and elaborate the single business case and to be able to provide an added value to the customer within reasonable time frames. A pre-requirement is to have good interpersonal skills, high flexibility, analytical thinking and the ability to dive deep into a particular subject with a good eye for details and understanding of data.
What was your career path to becoming a BI Analyst?
My first job was as a BI consultant in the public administration. Afterwards, I moved more into the Software Development area with different jobs as a Developer but always trying to use the knowledge gathered during the past working experiences. Finally, I moved back to the BI and Analytics sphere as these fields fascinated me most. The common point during these diverse jobs has always been the work with large datasets while having a specific business case in mind
How do you see the development of Business Intelligence/BI Analysts over the next 3 years?
I think BI-Analysts will move more and more towards data science within the next three years. This means that they will be working more frequently with new tools, methods and technologies (in particular AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning) to generate advanced data insights from existing data. The pre-requirement is that companies are able to provide as much as possible complete and clean data using the highest standards to be able to combine different systems and data sources and integrate them into an analytical platform.
Which three pieces of advice would you give to aspiring BI Analyst?
- Move out of your comfort zone and accept new challenges
- Stay up-to-date with technologies (self-education)
- Networking and connecting to people with your interests. This will make you grow as a person and professionally!
Thank you for your time!
