Data Scientist - 10 Best Practices, Portals & Career Development

Colleagues, this post will help you accelerate your career and income potential in the Data Science domain. Whether you are new to Data Science or or looking to advance your existing Data Scientist career this post has valuable information for you.

Best Practices

1. Master Core Foundations: Solidify your understanding of statistics, probability, linear algebra, and programming (Python/R), crucial for building robust models (Codecademy, Masters in Data Science).

2. Build a Strong Portfolio: Create diverse, impactful projects on platforms like Kaggle and GitHub, demonstrating end-to-end problem-solving and deployment skills.

3. Specialize Strategically: Focus on niches like NLP, computer vision, or MLOps, aligning with emerging industry demands (Hugging Face, OpenAI).

4. Embrace Cloud Platforms: Learn to deploy and manage data science solutions on major cloud providers (Google Cloud Data Science, Microsoft Azure AI).

5. Develop Data Visualization & Storytelling: Master tools like Power BI or Tableau to effectively communicate insights to non-technical stakeholders (Tableau.com).

6. Stay Current with Research: Regularly follow advancements in AI and ML from leading labs (DeepMind, OpenAI) and research publications (MIT Technology Review, X/Stats_Feed).

7. Practice MLOps: Understand the operational aspects of deploying, monitoring, and maintaining models in production environments.

8. Network and Collaborate: Engage with the data science community online (Kaggle forums, X) and in person to learn and find opportunities.

9. Pursue Lifelong Learning: The field changes constantly; commit to continuous education through courses, certifications, and hands-on experimentation.

10. Cultivate Business Acumen: Understand the business context and how data science solutions drive tangible value and impact organizational goals.

Resource Portals

• Coursera 

• Code Academy 

• Data Science on Google Cloud 

• Kaggle.com 

• Master’s in Data Science 

• Microsoft Power BI

• Tableau

• World of Statistics (X)

Specializations, Master Classes and Certifications

• Applied Data Science Specialization 

• Data Analytics Professional Certificate 

• Data Science: Foundations using R Specialization

• Data Science Fundamentals with Python and SQL Specialization

• Data Science Specialization

• Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization

• Data Science with Python and R

• Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate 

• IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate

• IBM Data Science Professional Certificate

• Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate (Exam PL-300) 

• Understanding Data Science 

Enroll today (teams & executives are welcome).  

Download your free Data Science  - Career Transformation Guide.

Explore our Data-Driven Organizations Audible and Kindle book series on Amazon:

1 - Data-Driven Decision-Making  (Audible) (Kindle)

2 - Implementing Data Science Methodology: From Data Wrangling to Data Viz (Audible) (Kindle)

Much success in your career journey, Lawrence E. Wilson - Data Science Academy (share with your team)