Data Science is the combination of process and systems that are used to gather insights and extract knowledge from various data forms both structured and unstructured. The field of data science incorporates a wide variety of topics and disciplines and may rightly be considered to be an extension of specialized fields like statistics, mining of data and also predictive analytics.

Companies are increasingly turning to data analytics to gain insights in to the processes of their businesses and so employers are looking for suitable candidates who may perform such data science tasks. This makes personnel skilled in the intricacies of data science much in demand amongst established corporate houses as well as start-up companies.

According to reports by the McKinsey Global Institute by 2018 there will more that 1.5 million open positions for data scientists. This should be great news to aspiring data scientists as well as professionals who want to enhance their skill sets even more.

The compensation packages for Data Scientist may be anything from $85,000 to $170,000 in the US and average annual salaries of data scientists may be Rs.510,643.

The following companies recruit data scientists regularly:

• FreeCharge
• SocialCops
• Myntra
• Snapdeal
• VMWare
• Housing
• Flipkart
• Helpchat
• Belong
• Mu Sigma