I am a Computer Science student currently in year 2. As it's a 3-year course, I will be graduating very soon so I am trying to learn up some skills to be as market ready as possible.

Just wondering how high the demand is in Malaysia for junior data scientist role? As in, for fresh grads.

It seems from the available job pools data scientist roles usually require few years of experience. On the other hand, there are plenty of junior developer roles, especially web developers. And I don't want to end up as a "data analyst" who does data entry and some basic operations. In that case, I might as well choose a development and aim for it lol.

According to the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF), there should be at least 20,000 data professionals and 2,000 data scientists by 2020. There are, however, just over 14,000 data professionals in Malaysia to date.

The country also requires 12,000 experts on big data, which concerns data sets too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing software.

This is one of the reasons Malaysia has resorted to hiring data-science professionals from the US.

sos

becareful of malaysia news on tech, a lot of the malaysia reporter dunno stuff but simply report invalid info. none of their report source can be trusted. the 14000 job numbers for actual data science job could be even lower.

This post has been edited by soules83: Feb 24 2023, 08:23 PM

tell you the truth, there is little job for data scientist in malaysia. confirmed by professional who are working on data.

Okay but what do I need to do to transition to data scientist in the future? Guess will be working as software developer first...

most data scientist in malaysia actually doing very simple job using tools, the hard part is building the model, and hardcore one usually likes to code themself with python, R

but data scientist can earn quite well.

but too bad the demand is too low I can't see how to transition to a career in data scientist. not a safe bet i suppose

there are demands, I always see vacancy on and off

If you are a fresh grad with a bachelor degree in data science, and you are interested in doing data science work, you might be hired as either a data engineer or a ML engineer, depending on what skill sets you have, that can be accessed via the syllabus taught in your uni, what you did for your final year project, and your experience during intern if applicable. Your jobs include data scraping, data labelling, data cleaning, model training, codes development, deployment, testing, monitoring, etc., depending on the role you are in. And YES!, tedious works like data labelling will be given to junior roles. Senior ML engineers will be focusing on codes development of ML solutions. If we don't have a junior to do these tedious jobs, YES! again, senior ML engineer or someone else (even a team lead) has to do it. Of course, it is possible to pay third party to do it depends on the budget.

As for what you mentioned about data analyst, I don't think data entry is their main work. They are expected to analyze data with tools and help others to make business decisions. It is possible that a junior is tasked to do it, but some companies do hire someone else to do this kind of job. I don't know the details as it is not part of my career plan. Maybe someone who has been in this role can share his experience.

For data scientist role though, few years ago, it was so hyped that all companies want to hire data scientists, and everyone wants to become a data scientist. Honestly, it is really bad cause recruiters don't really know what they want. Meanwhile, there are a lot of "fake" data scientists. Most of these data scientist roles are actually data analyst, statistician, engineer, and developer roles. Fortunately, nowadays, most of these companies know who they actually want to hire.

There are some companies still recruiting data scientist, but I think most of the time its role overlapped too much with many other roles. IMHO, the core value a data scientist can bring to the team is the ability to design and research new algorithms. Which mean, this role requires strong mathematics background, experienced in doing proper experiments, etc. Which is why it is common that the requirements include at least a master's degree in the related field and / or few years of experiences.

To be frank, we already have a lot of scientists, researchers, Master candidates, and PhD candidates working on algorithms. And only large companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft have the money for research funding. Most of the companies are more interested in developing a working ML solution quickly and start to make money. In other words, they only need to hire experienced ML engineers that are able to find out which model is suitable for the given problem in terms of both accuracy and speed, develop codes to wrap the model so that it can be used as part of the bigger system, do testing, monitor its performance, etc. Sometimes, they might hire one or two R&D engineers to help ML engineer to solve some ML related problems they faced.

So, depends on what you are really interested in, pick your role wisely. Most importantly, learn some additional skills, enroll in some courses that give you certificates that are recognized by most. For instance, cloud computing and database skills are highly demanded.

This post has been edited by Dark Lord: Feb 26 2023, 06:37 PM

demand not much because job replace by ai that data sciencist create

This post has been edited by kelvinfixx: Feb 26 2023, 06:50 PM

That's a long and good answer!

You are saying it is possible to be hired as a data engineer as a fresh graduate? So based on your experience, is the demand for data scientists/data engineers high or low? Or, is there already over saturation in the industry? Cz I have limited time and resource I need to pick a path that will lead to something wisely..thanks

Vacancies yes. but for fresh grad I can't seem to find on the market

I guess you need to start from smaller company, my ex company used to take fresh grad to save cost

Probably not as high demand for data scientist anymore but there are demands for data/ML/AI engineers.

According to my information, there are many extremely experienced experts said this:"There are a lot of people want to do data, there are also a lot of recruiters looking for talents in this field, but there are not many good ones."

I would also suggest you check out jobstreets, linkedin, and any other job seeking websites and search for keywords like data / ML / AI engineer and data scientist. That should be able to help you grasp which kind of jobs are more sought, what kind of skills they are looking for for these jobs, etc.

ya I am constantly looking at the markets. guess I have to keep an eye on it continuously, and also on the job tasks...I dont wanna end up doing something repetitive for the rest of my career...

Getting a job is not how good your grade are. Believe it or not, most interviewer don't even bother look at your cert. It's all about networking and relationship you have with the people who in the company. Better choose additional skill to develop and do small project on your own for showcase.

overseas? Singapore?

agree

join the braindrain. a lot of brain drain happened bcoz msia lack of high tech job.

When you grad, usually start of as junior/associate data analyst. Then from there either remain as data analyst, data engineer or data scientist.

If possible, look for a job outside of Msia. First world country have higher demand for data professions than msia. Simply because our local SMEs can’t be bothered with understanding the importances of data.