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Senior Data Analyst

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What Is a Senior Data Analyst? How to Become One, Salary, Skills.

Senior data analysts use data to solve high-priority business problems and oversee junior data analyst operations. Here’s what to know about a senior data analyst’s needed skills, salary and how to become one.

 

What Is a Senior Data Analyst?

Senior data analysts apply advanced statistical analysis, data mining and predictive modeling techniques to draw data-driven insights. They have similar responsibilities to junior data analysts, though are often involved in complex or specialized data analytics projects as well as management initiatives.

 

What Do Senior Data Analysts Do?

Senior data analysts tackle critical data analytics projects, guide analytics best practices and seek out areas for improvement in data extraction, conversion and decision-making processes.

Senior Data Analyst Responsibilities

  • Aggregate, clean and study data for key or specialized analytics projects. 
  • Identify data trends and insights to solve significant, immediate business problems.
  • Code programs to help capture and organize relevant data.
  • Manage the tasks of data analysts and identify optimization opportunities.
  • Collaborate directly with internal and external clients to meet analytics demands.

Senior Data Analysts Within a Company

Senior data analysts tend to be part of a data analytics or data science team. They may report to a data analytics manager.

Importance of Senior Data Analysts

Senior data analysts can play a key role in guiding data analytics teams and setting new procedures that improve business performance. They also act as an important resource for resolving urgent data-driven decisions and roadblocks.

Day in the Life of a Data Analyst. | Video: Jennyfer Vu

 

What Skills Are Needed to Be a Senior Data Analyst?

Qualifications to Be a Senior Data Analyst

  • Three or more years of experience in data analytics or data science roles. 
  • Proven ability in using statistical analysis, predictive modeling and explanatory modeling to identify trends.
  • Advanced understanding of data management and visualization practices.
  • Fluency in Python, R and/or SQL for data analytics. 

Senior Data Analyst Prerequisites

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science in computer science, information systems, statistics or related field.

Senior Data Analyst Hard Skills

  • Advanced knowledge of data analytics, cleaning and preparation.
  • Proficiency with data modeling and data analysis tools.
  • Expertise in programming languages (Java, Python, R, SAS, Scala, SQL).
  • Experience with statistical and mathematical analysis.
  • Applicable knowledge of machine learning technologies for data analytics.

Senior Data Analyst Soft Skills

  • Critical thinking skills.
  • Management best practices.
  • Problem-solving skills.
  • Verbal and written communication skills.

Tools and Programs Senior Data Analysts Use

  • C
  • Google Analytics
  • Java
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Python
  • R
  • SAS
  • Scala
  • SQL
  • Tableau
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How to Become a Senior Data Analyst

Senior Data Analyst Education and Experience

Senior data analysts are usually expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science, statistics or similar scientific discipline. 

They must also be able to show advanced experience in the areas of data analytics, programming languages (Python, R, SQL), statistical analysis, data visualization, management and strategic thinking.

Senior Data Analyst Certificates and Courses

Senior Data Analyst Career Path

Senior data analysts likely begin their careers as junior data analysts, business analysts, marketing analysts or related positions before stepping into the role. After gaining senior experience, professionals may move into roles like data analytics manager, director of analytics and eventually chief data officer.

 

Senior Data Analyst Salary and Job Outlook

Senior data analysts and similar roles will expect to see jobs grow up to 23 percent by 2031, a faster than average growth rate for U.S. positions.

The full compensation package for a senior data analyst depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s experience and geographic location. See below for detailed information on the average senior data analyst salary.

How do you become a senior data analyst?

Becoming a senior data analyst requires years of experience working as a data analyst or in a similar role.

Senior data analysts are tasked with fulfilling many of the same responsibilities as data analysts, with a primary focus on identifying data trends and insights to influence business growth. However, senior data analysts are typically assigned to higher priority projects that require a greater deal of expertise, so becoming one will require years of experience working first as a data analyst, business analyst or in a similar role that involves hands-on data management. Qualifications for a data analyst role include a bachelor’s degree in data analysis, data science, computer science, statistics or a related field, along with some relevant work experience in data entry, marketing or statistics. Senior data analysts can go on to have promising careers as data scientists, data engineers, data managers, and eventually, as directors of analytics. 

What is the salary of a senior data analyst?

The average base salary of a senior data analyst in the United States is $97,874.

Senior data analysts are top resources for an organization who work alongside data scientists to draw educated insights from high-priority data. Due to the impact that their analysis can make on a business, the average base salary of a senior data analyst in the United States is $97,874, according to Built In. U.S.-based senior data analysts also receive an average of $14,605 in additional cash compensation, raising the average total compensation for senior data analysts in the U.S. to $112,479. Built In collects salary data based on responses submitted by anonymous senior data analysts in the United States, with salary data updated in real time. 

What skills does a senior data analyst need?

Senior data analysts must have strong analytical data skills and the ability to collect, clean and manage data with various tools.

Senior data analysts are responsible for high-priority data analysis projects that have the largest impact on business growth and product development. To effectively manage these projects, senior data analysts must be well-informed about business goals and have the ability to work within databases and tools like Microsoft Excel, SQL, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and Jupyter Notebook. Senior data analysts should also have some knowledge of programming languages like Python for creating scripts and assisting data scientists with the use of algorithms.

Senior data analysts should also have command over the five phases of iteration for analysis work that includes identifying the data that must be analyzed, collecting the data, cleaning the data, analyzing the data and interpreting the results of the analysis. Maintaining this framework while performing analysis will keep senior data analysts working efficiently and able to seamlessly collaborate with other analysts, data scientists and data engineers.

 

Courses

Expand Your Senior Data Analyst Career Opportunities

Fill in your knowledge gaps with expert-led data science courses available on Udemy.

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Certifications

Senior Data Analyst Certifications + Programs

Find the right direction for your career by earning trending data science certifications from Udacity.

General Assembly’s Data Science part-time course is a practical introduction to the interdisciplinary field of data science and machine learning, which lies at the intersection of computer science, statistics, and business. You will learn to use the Python programming language to acquire, parse, and model data for informing business strategy. 

This is a fast-paced course with some prerequisites. Students should be comfortable with programming fundamentals, core Python syntax, and basic statistics. There is an option to complete up to 25 hours of online preparatory lessons. Talk to the General Assembly Admissions team to discuss your background and confirm if this is the right fit for you..

 

What you'll accomplish

A significant portion of the course is a hands- on approach to fundamental modeling techniques and machine learning algorithms. You’ll also practice communicating your results and insights by compiling technical documentation and a stakeholder presentation. Throughout this expert-designed program, you’ll:

  • Perform exploratory data analysis with Python.
  • Build and refine machine learning models to predict patterns
  • from data sets.
  • Communicate data-driven insights to technical and non-technical audiences alike.
  • Apply what you’ve learned to create a portfolio project: a predictive model that addresses a real-world data problem.

 

Why General Assembly

Since 2011, General Assembly has graduated more than 40,000 students worldwide from the full time & part time courses. During the 2020 hiring shutdown, GA's students, instructors, and career coaches never lost focus, and the KPMG-validated numbers in their Outcomes report reflect it. *For students who graduated in 2020 — the peak of the pandemic — 74.4% of those who participated in GA's full-time Career Services program landed jobs within six months of graduation. General Assembly is proud of their grads + teams' relentless dedication and to see those numbers rising. Download the report here.

 

Your next step? Submit an application to talk to the General Assembly Admissions team


 

Note: reviews are referenced from Career Karma - https://careerkarma.com/schools/general-assembly

 

Udacity
Intermediate
4 months
10 hours

General Assembly’s Data Analytics Immersive is a transformative course designed for you to get the necessary skills for a data analyst role in three months. 

The Data Analytics bootcamp is led by instructors who are expert practitioners in their field, supported by career coaches that work with you since day one and enhanced by a career services team that is constantly in talks with employers about their tech hiring needs.

 

What you'll accomplish

As a graduate, you’ll have a portfolio of projects that show your knowledge of data analytics skills, as well as experience with visualization tools and frameworks that employers demand. Throughout this expert-designed program, you’ll:

  • Acquire, analyze, and visualize data sets in real time.
  • Master industry-standard tools like SQL, Excel, Tableau, PowerBI, and Python.
  • Turn data into stories that can influence and inform important decisions.
  • Ask the right questions and answer them with data-informed insights.
  • Demonstrate what you’ve learned with a solid professional portfolio.

 

Why General Assembly

Since 2011, General Assembly has graduated more than 40,000 students worldwide from the full time & part time courses. During the 2020 hiring shutdown, GA's students, instructors, and career coaches never lost focus, and the KPMG-validated numbers in their Outcomes report reflect it. *For students who graduated in 2020 — the peak of the pandemic — 74.4% of those who participated in GA's full-time Career Services program landed jobs within six months of graduation. General Assembly is proud of their grads + teams' relentless dedication and to see those numbers rising. Download the report here.

 

Your next step? Submit an application to talk to the General Assembly Admissions team


 

Note: reviews are referenced from Career Karma - https://careerkarma.com/schools/general-assembl

 

Udacity
Intermediate
4 months
10 hours

Advance your programming skills and refine your ability to work with messy, complex datasets. You’ll learn to manipulate and prepare data for analysis, and create visualizations for data exploration. Finally, you’ll learn to use your data skills to tell a story with data.

Udacity
Intermediate
4 months
10 hours
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