The Ambiguity of Data Science Team Roles and the Need for a Data Science Workforce Framework

This paper first reviews the benefits of well-defined roles and then discusses the current lack of standardized roles within the data science community, perhaps due to the newness of the field. Specifically, the paper reports on five case studies exploring five different attempts to define a standard set of roles. These case studies explore the usage of roles from an industry perspective as well as from national standard big data committee efforts. The paper then leverages the results of these case studies to explore the use of data science roles within online job postings. While some roles appeared frequently, such as data scientist and data engineer, no role was consistently used across all five case studies. Hence, the paper concludes by noting the need to create a data science workforce framework that could be used by students, employers, and academic institutions. This framework would enable organizations to staff their data science teams more accurately with the desired skillsets.