Roles in data

8 minutes

Telling a story with the data is a journey that usually doesn't start with you. The data must
come from somewhere. Getting that data into a place that is usable by you takes effort that is
likely out of your scope, especially in consideration of the enterprise.

Today's applications and projects can be large and intricate, often involving the use of skills
and knowledge from numerous individuals. Each person brings a unique talent and expertise,
sharing in the effort of working together and coordinating tasks and responsibilities to see a
project through from concept to production.

In the recent past, roles such as business analysts and business intelligence developers were
the standard for data processing and understanding. However, excessive expansion of the size
and different types of data has caused these roles to evolve into more specialized sets of skills
that modernize and streamline the processes of data engineering and analysis.

The following sections highlight these different roles in data and the specific responsibility in
the overall spectrum of data discovery and understanding:

Business analyst

Data analyst

Data engineer

Data scientist

Database administrator

Business analyst
While some similarities exist between a data analyst and business analyst, the key
differentiator between the two roles is what they do with data. A business analyst is closer to
the business and is a specialist in interpreting the data that comes from the visualization.
Often, the roles of data analyst and business analyst could be the responsibility of a single
person.

Data analyst
A data analyst enables businesses to maximize the value of their data assets through
visualization and reporting tools such as Microsoft Power BI. Data analysts are responsible for
profiling, cleaning, and transforming data. Their responsibilities also include designing and
building scalable and effective semantic models, and enabling and implementing the
advanced analytics capabilities into reports for analysis. A data analyst works with the pertinent
stakeholders to identify appropriate and necessary data and reporting requirements, and then
they are tasked with turning raw data into relevant and meaningful insights.

A data analyst is also responsible for the management of Power BI assets, including reports,
dashboards, workspaces, and the underlying semantic models that are used in the reports.
They are tasked with implementing and configuring proper security procedures, in conjunction
with stakeholder requirements, to ensure the safekeeping of all Power BI assets and their data.

Data analysts work with data engineers to determine and locate appropriate data sources that
meet stakeholder requirements. Additionally, data analysts work with the data engineer and
database administrator to ensure that the analyst has proper access to the needed data
sources. The data analyst also works with the data engineer to identify new processes or
improve existing processes for collecting data for analysis.

Data engineer
Data engineers provision and set up data platform technologies that are on-premises and in
the cloud. They manage and secure the flow of structured and unstructured data from multiple
sources. The data platforms that they use can include relational databases, nonrelational
databases, data streams, and file stores. Data engineers also ensure that data services securely
and seamlessly integrate across data platforms.

Primary responsibilities of data engineers include the use of on-premises and cloud data
services and tools to ingest, egress, and transform data from multiple sources. Data engineers
collaborate with business stakeholders to identify and meet data requirements. They design
and implement solutions.
While some alignment might exist in the tasks and responsibilities of a data engineer and a
database administrator, a data engineer's scope of work goes well beyond looking after a
database and the server where it's hosted and likely doesn't include the overall operational
data management.

A data engineer adds tremendous value to business intelligence and data science projects.
When the data engineer brings data together, often described as data wrangling, projects
move faster because data scientists can focus on their own areas of work.

As a data analyst, you would work closely with a data engineer in making sure that you can
access the variety of structured and unstructured data sources because they will support you in
optimizing semantic models, which are typically served from a modern data warehouse or data
lake.

Both database administrators and business intelligence professionals can transition to a data
engineer role; they need to learn the tools and technology that are used to process large
amounts of data.

Data scientist
Data scientists perform advanced analytics to extract value from data. Their work can vary from
descriptive analytics to predictive analytics. Descriptive analytics evaluate data through a
process known as exploratory data analysis (EDA). Predictive analytics are used in machine
learning to apply modeling techniques that can detect anomalies or patterns. These analytics
are important parts of forecast models.

Descriptive and predictive analytics are only partial aspects of data scientists' work. Some data
scientists might work in the realm of deep learning, performing iterative experiments to solve a
complex data problem by using customized algorithms.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the work in a data science project is spent on data
wrangling and feature engineering. Data scientists can speed up the experimentation process
when data engineers use their skills to successfully wrangle data.

On the surface, it might seem that a data scientist and data analyst are far apart in the work
that they do, but this conjecture is untrue. A data scientist looks at data to determine the
questions that need answers and will often devise a hypothesis or an experiment and then turn
to the data analyst to assist with the data visualization and reporting.

Database administrator
A database administrator implements and manages the operational aspects of cloud-native
and hybrid data platform solutions that are built on Microsoft Azure data services and
Microsoft SQL Server. A database administrator is responsible for the overall availability and
consistent performance and optimizations of the database solutions. They work with
stakeholders to identify and implement the policies, tools, and processes for data backup and
recovery plans.

The role of a database administrator is different from the role of a data engineer. A database
administrator monitors and manages the overall health of a database and the hardware that it
resides on, whereas a data engineer is involved in the process of data wrangling, in other
words, ingesting, transforming, validating, and cleaning data to meet business needs and
requirements.

The database administrator is also responsible for managing the overall security of the data,
granting and restricting user access and privileges to the data as determined by business
needs and requirements.