Close to 97,000 positions related to analytics and data science that are currently vacant due to a dearth of qualified talent, according to a study conducted by Great Learning, an online ed-tech company for working professionals.  A majority of these job openings are for junior level roles. The number of unfilled positions has seen a whopping increase of 45% over last year indicating the widening talent gap in the industry.

This year, companies are boosting entry-level hiring in a bid to create a talent pipeline, keeping with the long-term vision of building deep expertise in the space. Around 70% of job openings this year are for candidates with less than 5 years of experience, an increase of 8% over last year. Opportunities for freshers have also increased with openings for them accounting for 21% of analytics jobs, compared to 17% last year. 31% of the job openings in the sector this year are for professionals with over 5 years of experience.

Hari Krishnan Nair, Co-founder, Great Learning said, “A 45% increase in the supply gap in just one year indicates the pace at which businesses are adopting analytics and data-based decision making. In the last few years, many large players have been forced to acqui-hire talent to keep the wind in their sails. At the same time, for those looking to enter the sector, a surplus of jobs is a great opportunity. The need of the hour is for professionals to reskill themselves and get job ready.”

Rising demand for analytics 

Accounting for 24% of total analytics jobs, Bengaluru continues to be the hub of analytics professionals. Financial centers like Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai have increased their share of analytics jobs this year with Delhi/ NCR contributing 22% of analytics jobs in India, Mumbai contributing 15% and Chennai 7%.

According to the report, the median salary being offered for analytics jobs in India is INR 11.5 lakhs/annum. There has been an increase in the number of analytics jobs offering more than INR 15 lakhs/annum. 23% of all advertised jobs last year were offering more than INR 15 Lakhs as opposed to 20% a year ago.

While BFSI and Energy sector continue to be the major job drivers for the analytics industry, e-commerce, pharma, and retail sectors have posted strong growth in demand for analytics professionals this year.  38% of all jobs posted are from the banking sector. Retail has more than doubled its share of jobs to 7% from ~2% last year. E-commerce, pharma, and automobiles have contributed 12%, 13% and 6% of the jobs respectively. Telecom, on the other hand, has seen the biggest fall in demand with just 4% of job postings as opposed to 8% last year.

Skills in demand

The top 10 leading organizations which have posted the highest number of job openings this year are Accenture, Amazon, KPMG, Honeywell, Wells Fargo, E&Y, Dell International, eClerx Services and Deloitte. Full-time positions significantly outweigh part-time and contractual openings in the country, indicating the continuing importance of Data science professionals for organizations. The top designations advertised are: Analytics Manager, Business Analyst, Research Analyst, Data Analyst, SAS Analyst, Analytics Consultant, Statistical Analyst, Hadoop Developer.

According to the report, demand for Python is the highest amongst all the recruiters with almost 17% job postings, closely followed by Java with 16% job openings. R comes third in the most critical skills list, with 10% of all analytics jobs requiring this skillset. Tableau, AWS, Azure, Hadoop, SQL and segmentation continue to be the other skills in demand. The report highlights the multidisciplinary nature of jobs in the sector and stresses that a professional programmer or a data analyst should have the ability to learn new coding languages to stay relevant.