Bootcamps used to be strictly for military types, but in the past decade, they've become a tech industry phenomenon. Tens of thousands of tech professionals have graduated from bootcamps over the last decade, most of them freshly-minted developers. A new crop of bootcamps, though, trains students to work with data.
A breed apart from come-one-come-all coding bootcamps, data science bootcamps often have academic prerequisites. Some require candidates with undergraduate STEM degrees; a few, like the New York Data Science Academy, favor PhDs in STEM fields. This reflects data scientist job requirements, which can be extensive.
But data science bootcamps aren't strictly focused on training future data scientists. That role largely involves building big data-based models and machine-learning algorithms. Many data science bootcamps, however, cover multiple stages in big data’s life cycle, including data engineering and data analytics.
Curriculum-wise, these bootcamps blend lectures with hands-on practice using statistical concepts and coding in Python, R, or both.
"By the time I finished, Python was my most comfortable language and I felt very confident in it," data scientist Tommy Blanchard writes of his experience at Data Insight.
Job market prep, including practice interviews, comes with the coursework. One camper enrolled at Metis wrote that he received "resume makeovers" and fresh LinkedIn headshots. Alumni networks often help, too, connecting new bootcamp graduates with job opportunities through Slack channels and other community forums.
In the corporate world, businesses typically welcome bootcamp graduates with open arms. Though it's rare that camps are formally accredited, the vast majority of employers — 72 percent, according to Indeed — view bootcamps and computer science degrees as equally good job training.
Top Data Science Bootcamps
- Flatiron School- 12 Locations Globally
- NYC Data Science Academy- NYC
- Galvanize- 8 Locations Nationally
- General Assembly- 20 Locations Globally
- Springboard- Online Only
- RMOTR- Online Only
- Metis- 5 Locations Globally
- DataCamp- Online Only
- BitBootCamp- NYC
Want to learn more? We've rounded up 21 data science bootcamps worth knowing.
Flatiron School
Location: 12 locations globally
What it does: This 15-week program spans topics from SQL and NoSQL databases to machine learning and the art of sampling. Mentors meet with students one-on-one each week to ensure the program meets their personal goals, and students collaborate on homework assignments at WeWork locations, using memberships included in enrollment. Flatiron backs this class, and its coding bootcamp, with a money-back guarantee.
NYC Data Science Academy
Location: New York City
What it does: Designed for STEM-savvy candidates seeking technological training, the 12-week curriculum focuses primarily on coding — in both R and Python — and creating machine-learning algorithms. A different specialist teaches each unit of the program, which begins with 40 hours of free pre-work and is available in-person and online. Ideal candidates have PhDs, masters degrees or equivalent experience in a STEM field; program alums have landed at Google, Goldman Sachs, Aetna and more.
Galvanize
Location: 8 locations nationally
What it does: During this 13-week data science boot camp, students learn the fundamentals of machine learning, natural language processing and more by tackling case studies based on real-world business challenges. Alums have snagged roles with Tesla and Spotify; overall, the program has 83 percent job-placement rate, thanks in part to complimentary post-grad career support. Galvanize also offers prep courses for students who need to brush up on Python, math and statistics before the program.
General Assembly
Location: 20 locations globally
What it does: General Assembly is one of the most established bootcamp providers in the country, with a vast alumni network of more than 70,000. Its data science bootcamp lasts 12 to 13 weeks, with a Python-based curriculum that covers machine learning and statistical models for categorizing and forecasting.
Byte Academy
Location: New York City
What it does: This 14-week immersive course covers a wide variety of topics, from statistics fundamentals to natural language processing. Led by a one-time Google engineer, the program helps students prepare for their dream careers. Midway through the program, students can opt to focus on one of three career tracks: data scientist, data analyst or data engineer. Students can also focus on data science applications in specific fields of interest, like medicine or fintech.
Springboard
Location: Online only
What it does: In this six-month boot camp, which blends instruction with one-on-one mentorship, students master Python and acquire more specialized skills like data-cleaning and distributed computing in Spark. Midway through, they choose from three fields of specialization to ensure they’re prepared for the roles they want. Each graduate leaves with a portfolio of 14 data science projects.
RMOTR
Location: Online only
What it does: This part-time bootcamp offers live evening video classes for people with full-time jobs. Students put in 20-hour weeks to finish the four-month, Python-based program, which covers topics like automating data scraping from websites and APIs, managing data in Pandas DataFrames, and creating visualizations in Bokeh. The career advising team also helps students forge strong personal brands and prepare for technical interviews.
Thinkful
Location: Online
What it does: Thinkful’s bootcamps integrate a social element into online learning, with networked cohorts and daily one-on-one mentoring. Students in its six-month data science program spend 20-30 hours a week on their studies, exploring experimental design and SQL querying in livecast classes and homework assignments. After an introductory sequence, students can also choose from seven specializations, including network analysis, time series and data science for a social sciences.
Brainstation
Location: New York City
What it does: The immersive 12-week course on Brainstation’s SoHo campus covers various methods of collecting, storing and synthesizing data. By the end of the project-based sequence, students have created data visualizations with Tableau and experimented with TensorFlow’s open-source deep learning platform. Brainstation also offers a pared- down part-time professional development course in data science that's conducted online.
Metis
Location: 5 locations globally
What it does: This 12-week bootcamp builds from basic linear regressions to advanced topics like unsupervised machine learning to a final, self-directed capstone project. On the last day of class, also known as Career Day, students present their projects to peers and recruiters. Graduates have snagged data science jobs at companies like Facebook and Spotify.
Data Science Dojo
Location: Touring; see the schedule for upcoming locations
What it does: This bootcamp caters to students who want to learn practical data science skills without quitting their current jobs. Data Science Dojo compresses a rigorous curriculum into five 10-hour days, concluding in an Internet of Things project. Before and after in-person instruction, students complete about 30 hours of coursework on their own.
The Dev Masters
Location: Los Angeles, Irvine and Santa Monica, Calif.
What it does: The Dev Masters offer two part-time data science bootcamps: the 20-week Mastering Data Science with Deep Learning and the 16-week Mastering Applied Data Science. In the deep learning bootcamp, students experiment with multiple libraries, including Theano and TensorFlow; in the applied data science bootcamp, they explore technologies ranging from recommender systems to computer vision. Both bootcamps meet on Saturdays and Sundays in classrooms with five students per teacher, and both offer unlimited one-on-one support.
Ubiqum Coding Academy
Location: 3 locations in Europe
What it does: This five-month-long data analytics and machine learning course focuses on data science applications in business. Students build algorithms in Rapidminer and forecast trends in R, often in the context of retail and consulting case studies. They also learn to present their data analysis persuasively to non-technical executives.
Dataquest
Location: Online only
What it does: In this online Python-based course, participants clean real-world data and use it to craft forecasting models and machine-learning algorithms. The sequence, or "path" as Dataquest calls it, consists of 34 project-based courses, many of them free. (The rest are available for a subscription fee.) Students work through the coursework at their own pace, supported by staff offering in-browser hints and feedback.
Promotable
Locations: Chicago and Washington, D.C.
What it does: Promotable’s team teaches the fundamentals of data analytics in evening classes that fit with typical work schedules and require only a five-hour weekly time commitment. Through coursework, students hone their Python coding and query vast databases with SQL. Along the way, they create Tableau data visualizations and experiment with machine learning.
Data Application Lab
Location: Los Angeles
What it does: In this 16-week part-time bootcamp, available online or in-person, students assemble an extensive portfolio of data science projects. Starting week one, students create weekly mini-projects, like a preliminary bank fraud detection system. Then, for the final six weeks, students devote themselves to two substantive final projects: a game recommendation system made with SQL and Jupyter’s Notebook; and an automated investment advisor, rooted in machine-learning algorithms and data from more than a million transactions.
DataCamp
Location: Online only
What it does: In DataCamp’s online data science training sequences — one each for R and Python — students start with the fundamentals of coding, and work their way up through topics like logistic regression, relational databases and SQL. Curated and sequenced by industry experts, both data science tracks include about 100 hours of interactive lessons grounded in case studies, and culminate in advanced topics like cluster analysis and deep learning.
Data Society
Location: Online only
What it does: Data Society’s subscription-based courses prep students for data analyst and network analyst roles. Self-paced to accommodate working students, the online courses include reference guides, templates and project-based assignments. Students begin with foundational R lessons, then move on to forecasting trends and mining Twitter data — skills the instructors believe can benefit professionals in all fields.
K2 Data Science
Location: Online only
What it does: This digital bootcamp, led by a team of working data scientists, consists of about 700 hours of learning. Thirty of those hours are occupied by video lessons, but the bulk of the course is comprised of independent assignments and coding projects, some for real-world tech companies. To get in, students need at least three years of experience in a technical role plus a quantitative degree. They also must complete up to 100 hours of prep work.
Science to Data Science
Location: London
What it does: This five-week course, offered in person or online, is one of the most advanced on this list. Applicants are required to have a PhD in an analytical science and intermediate programming skills in Python, R or Java. And those who are accepted accumulate real work experience. The program is part school, part consulting firm: After some initial conceptual lectures, students split into mentor-led teams, each of which completes a data science project for an actual company.
BitBootCamp
Location: New York City
What it does: BitBootCamp's founders worked on Wall Street and struggled to find the data professionals they needed. Now, in their eight-week bootcamp, they teach the statistical and computational expertise they formerly sought, including techniques like cluster analysis and fuzzy matching. Students also learn to communicate their technical findings clearly through visualizations and data-driven storytelling.
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