by Robert A. Muenchen, updated 08/30/2022
This article describes the technical details of searching for jobs in the field of data science. The results of the searches are displayed and discussed in The Popularity of Data Science Software. The protocols were implemented on 2/27/2017, and they are significantly different from the previous set posted on 2/20/2014.
Data Science Terms
Some software used for data science is also used for many other tasks. Let’s consider a few examples. General purpose languages, such as C, Java, or Python, are used heavily for some data science tasks, but if you do a job search on just their names, the great majority of jobs found will not be for data science. Other software such as Cognos, SAS, and Tableau are very popular for simple report writing as well as for data science jobs. Therefore simple searches will find a blend of both types of jobs. Finally, some software, such as Apache Spark, SPSS, or Stata, are very specific to data science. With such a mix of software, the challenge is to use search terms that will yield comparable values across all types of software.
To compile a list of search terms that are specific to data science jobs, I started out searching for jobs that required software that is used specifically for data science. I then looked for terms that often appeared in those job descriptions. Next, I searched for jobs that featured only those terms, one at a time. Some, such as “analytics,” resulted in searches that were not well focused; jobs that had nothing to do with data science would appear. Others, such as “econometrics,” did indeed focus on data science jobs, but only in the field of economics. As I worked my way through these searches, I found more search terms to test. The results are shown in Table 1.
| Search Terms | Jobs Found |
| Analytics (not well focused) | 123,895 |
| Survey (not well focused) | 72,323 |
| Statistics (not well focused) | 66,201 |
| Statistical (not well focused) | 55,998 |
| Big Data | 20,646 |
| Analyze data (not well focused) | 20,068 |
| Business intelligence (too much reporting) | 19,709 |
| Data analytics | 15,774 |
| Machine learning | 12,499 |
| Statistical analysis | 11,397 |
| Data mining | 9,757 |
| Data Science | 6,873 |
| Quantitative analysis | 4,095 |
| Business analytics * | 4,043 |
| Research associate (too vague) | 3,794 |
| Advanced Analytics | 3,479 |
| Data Scientist | 3,272 |
| Statistical software | 2,835 |
| Predictive analytics | 2,411 |
| Artificial intelligence | 2,404 |
| Predictive modeling | 2,264 |
| Statistical modeling | 2,040 |
| Econometrics (too focused) | 1,860 |
| Quantitative research | 1,837 |
| Research analyst | 1,756 |
| Statistical tools | 1,414 |
| Statistician | 904 |
| Statistical packages | 784 |
| Survey research | 440 |
| Quantitative modeling | 352 |
| Statistical research | 208 |
| Statistical computing | 153 |
| Research computing | 133 |
| Statistical analyst | 125 |
| Data miner | 34 |
Table 1. Terms used in data science job descriptions
Ideally, one could include all the focused terms in a search, but Indeed.com’s search feature limits the size of the search string. To determine the maximum string size, I put in the longest software string and then added in the data science terms. The data science terms were then truncated to show the limit. Table 2 shows the resulting set of search terms that I used to append to each software title. For example, when searching for Java, I would enter: Java and “big data” or “data analytics” or …”statistician”. Logically, it would make more sense to put parentheses around all those “or” clauses, but that sharply reduces the true job count.
and "big data" or "data analytics" or "machine learning" or "statistical analysis" or "data mining" or "data science" or "quantitative analysis" or "business analytics" or "advanced analytics" or "data scientist" or "statistical software" or "predictive analytics" or "artificial intelligence" or "predictive modeling" or "statistical modeling" or "quantitative research" or "research analyst" or "statistical tools" or "statistician"
Table 2. The data science terms and logic that are appended to every job search.
Additional Challenges
Some software offered additional challenges. Those with letter names, C and R, were found using spaces before and after their names, such as (” R ” or ” R,”) . This isn’t a perfect solution since it would count an advertisement for a data scientist skilled in SAS at the “Toys R Us” company as a job for someone with R skills. Conversely, the search for an R programmer at the SAS Shoe company would also be counted as one for a SAS programmer. Many of these searches have similar flaws, but the size of the search limits accuracy. However, if you look through the resulting job advertisements, you’ll see that errors with this search approach are rare.
When advertisements list the C language, it’s most often in the form of “C, C++, or C#,” so no attempt was made to differentiate those variants. However, Objective C was usually advertised for iPad or iPhone application development, so it was excluded.
Microsoft presented another challenge. Just its name combined with the data science terms yielded results that were heavily biased by the inclusion of general-purpose tools such as Microsoft SQL Server. Focusing the search with (“Azure Machine” or “Azure Stream” or “Microsoft R” or “Cortana Intelligence” or “Microsoft Cognitive” or CNTK) used up so much space that two of the data science terms had to be dropped: “statistical tools” and “statistician.”
Another challenging search was for Domino Data Labs’ Data Science Platform. The search (Domino and “Data Science Platform”) found no jobs, not even for those from the company itself! Just the term “Domino,” along with the data science terms, found mostly job descriptions that mentioned Lotus Domino. For the 2017 search, I simply culled the small number of results by hand.
Similarly, the search for Alpine and the data science terms yielded mostly irrelevant hits, so I culled them manually.
The Search Terms
Table 3 shows the search terms used for each software. See Table 1 for the data science terms that were appended to every search except Microsoft, whose complete search is shown below.
Alteryx and data sci terms
Amazon: see SageMaker (otherwise very tough to focus on AWS)
Anaconda and data sci terms
(drop Flink next year; not general enough)
Apache Hadoop: Hadoop and data sci terms
Apache Mahout: Mahout and data sci terms
Apache Flink: Flink and data sci terms
Apache MXNet: MXnet and data sci terms
Apache Pig: Pig and data sci terms
Apache Spark: Spark and data sci terms
"Azure Machine Learning" and data sci terms
"BlueSky Statistics" and data sci terms
BMDP and data sci terms
Again, note that parentheses should NOT be used:
"C programmer" or "C programming" or "C developer" or
"C++" or "C#" and !"objective c" and data sci terms
Caffe and data sci terms
"Civis Analytics" and data sci terms
Cognos and data sci terms
Databricks and data sci terms
Dataiku and data sci terms
DataRobot and data sci terms
Domino Data Labs: "domino data" and data sci terms
[Beware of just "domino" as it gets pizza data sci jobs!]
"Enterprise Miner" and data sci terms
FICO [avoid this one; too hard to focus away from credit scores]
FORTRAN and data sci terms
"GNU Octave" and data sci terms
Google:
Too difficult to nail down. See Tensorflow, etc.
graphPad and Prism and data sci terms
"H2O" and data sci terms
Hadoop and data sci terms
IBM SPSS: (SPSS and !"SPSS Modeler") and data sci terms
IBM SPSS Modeler: "SPSS Modeler" and data sci terms
"IBM Watson" and !"Watson Research Center" and data sci terms
Intellectus is confounded with several other tools and
a school named "Intellectus Preperatory" or "Intellectus Prep"
so while the counts are very low (1!) I'm manually filtering them
JASP and data sci terms
jamovi and data sci terms
Java and !"java script" and and data sci terms
JMP and data sci terms
Julia and data sci terms
Keras adn data sci terms
KNIME and data sci terms
Lavastorm and data sci terms
Lasagne and data sci terms
Mathematica and data sci terms
MATLAB and data sci terms
Megaputer or Polyanalyst and data sci terms
Minitab and data sci terms
Microsoft: see Azure machine learning & Power BI
MLlib and data sci terms
Number Cruncher Statistical System:
NCSS is its name, but its usage is close to zero, while the
letters stand for many job-related abbreviations.
Don't even try this one!
OpenText is zero when combined with data sci terms;
by itself it might be 500, so don't include this one.
Orange is a delightful data science tool, but there are
way too many uses of this word in job ads that have
nothing to do with this software. The way it is cited
is not found in job ads: "Orange: Data Mining Toolbox"
"OriginPro" or "OriginLab" and data sci terms
[Just "origin" vastly overcounts.]
Pentaho and data sci terms
Power BI - this is tricky since it is spelled with and without
a space, and Indeed.com does not do a preceding "and" properly.
So you must do two searches, then add them:
"Power BI" and data sci terms +
"PowerBI" and data sci terms
Python and data sci terms
Pytorch and data sci terms
R: (" R " or " R,") and data sci terms
"R AnalyticFLow" and data sci terms
"R Commander" and data sci terms
"R-Instat" and data sci terms
RapidMiner + data sci terms
Rattle: impossible. You'll find "rattle you", "rattle them", "squeeks and rattles", "rattle paddle", "rattle snakes", etc.
RKWard and data sci terms
SageMaker and data sci terms
("SAP Predictive" or "SAP Automated" or "SAP Leonardo" or "SAP Hana") and data sci terms
SAS: (SAS !"Enterprise Miner") and data sci terms
SAS Enterprise Miner: "Enterprise Miner" and data sci terms
Scala: "Scala" and data sci terms
"Scikit Learn" and data sci terms
"Splunk" and data sci terms
(SPSS and !Modeler) and data sci terms
"SPSS Modeler" and data sci terms
SQL and data sci terms
Stata and data sci terms
Statgraphics and data sci terms
Systat and data sci terms
Tableau and data sci terms
Tensorflow and data sci terms
Theano and data sci terms
Tibco: (tibco or spotfire or statistica) and data sci terms
Vowpal Wabbit WEKA and data sci terms
World Programming: "WPS Analytics" plus data sci terms
Table 3. Search terms used for each software (see Table 1 for data science terms).
Searching for Trends
Indeed.com has a Job Trends tool that lets you see how jobs are changing over the last several years. You can enter one or more searches from one of the examples above to see the trends. Unfortunately, searching for trends must be much simpler than Indeed.com’s main job search. The best pair of queries I could get to compare R and SAS is:
R
and ("big data"
or "data analytics"
or "machine learning"
or "statistical analysis"
or "data mining"
or "data science")
SAS
and ("big data"
or "data analytics"
or "machine learning"
or "statistical analysis"
or "data mining"
or "data science")
Now that you’ve got the details, examine the results here. I’m interested in improving this methodology, so if you have ideas, please comment below or email me at muenchen.bob@gmail.com.
A very good study indeed. By the way do you use the Advanced Job Search Option on indeed.com or on the ordinary search option .
Hi Soumya,
I used the standard search. My searches were so specific that I did not find the advanced search added any capabilities that I needed.
Cheers,
Bob
Very good study . By the way are you using the Advanced Job Search to get the numbers or the ordinary search option ?
Thanks Bob – applied to several positions today using this precise methodology… Wonderful!
Hi Joe,
Since my goal was to measure the popularity or market share of analytics tools, it did not even occur to me that people would use this info to actually find jobs. Doh! I’m glad it helped!
Cheers,
Bob
This is an extremely helpful post for people who are looking for jobs in the Data Science industry. Using advanced search is quite effective to find the posts you are looking for. Thank you for sharing this!
Hi ProQuotient,
I’m glad you’re finding the site useful!
Cheers,
Bob
Indeed.com should have a classification for employers for “Data Science ” for all of the “data scientists ” from different industries. Therefore, job hunting would be much easier for potential data scientists. Thanks for the articles.
Hi Africa,
If you look at their “advanced search” you’ll see the fields they allow you to search on. I’m searching on all fields, and it’s very fast. They could create a classification system where you would choose a category, like “Science & Technology” and then choose a subcategory like “Data Scientist”, but it would be a big job for them to maintain as terminology changes.
Cheers,
Bob