A study on jobs and hiring trends in analytics and data science domains conducted by Great Learning, one of India’s leading EdTech companies for professional and higher education reveals that over 93,500 data science jobs were vacant in India at the end of August 2020. The study provides a comprehensive view of the data science job landscape in 2020, including the impact that COVID-19 has had on the vacancies in the sector.

Insights from the recent Jobs and Hiring Study in Analytics and Data Science domains:

• India’s share of data science jobs growing with large IT companies increasing their presence in India
• BFSI continues to be the domain with highest job openings
• Demand for mid and senior level professionals shows a spike in 2020

Demand despite COVID-19 fury

Despite COVID-19, the enthusiasm and optimism around the analytics function in India continues to remain high with India contributing 9.8% of the total global analytics job openings in August 2020 compared to 7.2% in January this year. While the sector did witness a slight decrease in vacancies (from 109,000 vacancies in February to 82,500 vacancies in August 2020), the demand has continued to be fairly consistent across key industry sectors. The factors contributing to the increased demand include a year-on-year increase in funding in Indian analytics startups, investment in the development of enhanced analytics capabilities in India, and a greater proportion of jobs outsourced to firms based in India owing to the pandemic. The current demand is dominated by MNC and Domestic IT & KPO organizations that are shifting jobs to India and are recruiting in large numbers.

Hiring by experience levels

The study reveals the growing demand for mid and senior level professionals with over 7 years of experience in 2020. While 2019 was dominated by young professionals in terms of the number of jobs available, this is the year when the industry is pulling all the stops for the mid-level and senior counterparts. Professionals with more than 7 years of experience commanded the highest proportion of jobs with a share of 14.9% in August 2020, up from 12.5% in January 2020 and 6.7% last year. Interestingly, the demand for those with 10 to 15 years of experience increased to 11% in August 2020 after doubling to 8.6% in January 2020 from last year. The demand for those with 15+ years of experience has also witnessed a big leap to 4.9% in August 2020 after almost tripling to 2.8% in January 2020 from 1.0% last year. 

City-wise demand

Bengaluru continues to create the maximum number of jobs, contributing around 23% of analytics jobs in India, a marginal increase from last year, followed by Delhi/ NCR at 20% and Mumbai at approximately 15%. Other popular metros like Hyderabad, Pune, and  Chennai witnessed marginal growth in the proportion of  jobs in August 2020 over last year. Interestingly, the proportion of jobs advertised for Tier-II and Tier-III cities, has increased this year to 10.5% from 8.4% in January 2020. This is mainly because the outbreak has led to the adoption of remote working and hiring. This trend is expected to last till the second quarter of 2021.

Industry-wise demand

Despite the BFSI sector continuing to be the largest recruiter of analytics and data science talent(outside of IT), creating around 35% of all analytics jobs in the country, the contribution of the sector has been going down year on year from 41% in 2018 to 38.3% in 2019 and 35% in August 2020. Interestingly, pharma sector has seen an increase in the proportion of analytics jobs at 16.3%, an overall increase of 3.9% over the last year. This is due to the focus on developing vaccines and other cures for the COVID-19 virus. The hiring in the sector has also shown an upward swing owing to heightened demand and increased competition. Other sectors like E-commerce, Energy & Utilities, Media and Entertainment, Retail and Telecom have also shown a greater appetite for analytics talent this year. 

Top recruiters

The 10 leading organisations with the most number of analytics openings this year are dominated by the IT and KPO players such as Accenture, Mphasis, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Capgemini, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, IBM India, Dell, HCL, and Collabera Technologies. They are increasingly hiring for roles like Analytics Specialist, Data Scientist, Decision Science Manager, Business Analyst, Analytics Manager, Statistical Modelling, Statistical Analyst, Marketing Research Analytics, and Operations Analytics Manager. When it comes to the IT sector, almost 68% of the demand is getting generated by MNC IT & KPO Service Providers, the highest this year but have decreased from 74.6% at the start of the year. Jobs in captive centres in India which stated one of the highest analytics job requirements 3 years ago, have now fallen to 5.8% in August 2020.

Salary trends

The study further reveals that the median salary for data science professionals in India stands at INR 9.5 Lakhs/annum in 2020 as per the listed job openings (the actual salary is generally higher than the listed salary). For those with more than a decade of experience, packages are in the range of Rs. 25 lakhs to Rs. 50 lakhs depending on the role and expertise. 

Skills in demand

The demand for Python professionals continues to remain the highest among recruiters with almost 27% of the jobs requiring Python as the core skill. It is closely followed by Java/JavaScript that is witnessing a 22% demand. R comes third in the list at 10%, the same as last year. Among Dashboarding and BI tools, Tableau skills are most in-demand with 11% demand in August 2020, followed by Microsoft Power BI contributing 6.5% demand. With greater adoption of cloud platforms across enterprises, the demand for cloud solutions including AWS (15%), Azure Skills (9.7%), and Google Cloud (5%) continued to soar even during the lockdown.

Hari Krishnan Nair, Co-founder, Great Learning said, "Over the last year, we have seen an immense growth in the demand for professionals proficient with skills in data science and analytics. A key reason for this is the increased availability of top of the line analytics talent in India which has led to captive firms and international IT and KPO corporations moving more of their business to India, investing in newer technologies and digital competencies   and opening new positions here. The talent pool in our country has been looking for avenues to learn, upskill, and accelerate their careers, and this rise in demand has been seen at a very opportune moment. To unlearn, learn and reskill is now an imperative for professionals to stay ahead of the curve."