The Chief Datayyyy

Officer Role is
Changing: Here’s
How
Experts examine how evolving market trends are
reshaping the CDO role
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
In this e-guide:
Chief data officers, data engineers, data scientists, and other data experts are in charge of a
massive swath of data architecture, tools, and processes.
On top of these responsibilities, there is a massive amount of innovation occurring within this
space—a newly automated data lake or AI training strategy seems to emerge every other
week. That means it’s more important than ever to stay up to date on the skills,
responsibilities, and knowledge you need as a data expert.
As you read this e-guide, you’ll be reacquainted with the expectations that come with titles like
CDO and learn how you can innovate within this role, even as you take on increasingly large
responsibilities within your organization.
▼ Next Article
Page 1 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Expert urges data pros to hone data
science skills
Brian Holak, Site Editor
Data professionals should consistently improve their data science skills and find ways to
increase their company's data maturity, according to William McKnight, president of McKnight
Consulting Group.
McKnight was referring to a data maturity model and the data science skills learning path that
data professionals should follow on the job. Essentially, that means abandoning old habits
and learning new techniques and technologies all the time.
"There's more maturity in moving imperfectly than in merely perfecting and defining the
shortcomings," McKnight said. "We have to be on a journey forward. We have to be
embracing the trends that are going to be sticking around."
If data practitioners more fully embrace data science, look to upgrade their skills and build a
strong data foundation -- whether it's a traditional data warehouse, data lake or multi-cloud
setup -- they'll be better prepared for the BI and analytics trends and technologies
transforming the enterprise today, McKnight said. During a recent Dataversity webinar, he
offered career advice for data professionals to succeed amid the fast pace in the analytics
software market.
Keep up your skills
Keeping up analytics and data science skills is key, McKnight said.
Page 2 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"I want you to improve your skills 20% every
year," he said. If you don't learn new skills, "all We can't simply throw
you're doing is building technical debt for bodies at initiatives that
yourself. Then, one day, [new technology and
everybody else in the
trends] are going to come to fruition, and you're
going to need to change 100%, and you're not company seems to come
going to be able to do it." up with.
Similarly, it's time for IT professionals to become president, McKnight
data science leaders within their organizations --
even if they don't consider themselves data Consulting Group
scientists, McKnight said. These organizational
innovators prioritize data-driven insights and lead
William McKnight
by example by emphasizing statistical models
and machine learning to help drive business
decisions.
To become an effective data scientist, you should continually advance your data science skills
and try new methods and approaches, according to McKnight. That's what that first wave of
data science leaders did, and they've set an example for other IT professionals who may not
consider themselves to be in the category of "data scientist," he said.
Page 3 of 29
In this e-guide

• Expert urges data pros to

hone data science skills

• The evolving role of the

chief data officer

• Chief data officer role now

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

"There have been some

Page 4 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
'fake-it-till-you-make-it' data scientists out there the past few years," McKnight said. "They
weren't trained Ph.D.s; they were business analysts. But some of them actually made it, and
they're data scientists now."
Data maturity is highly correlated to business success, McKnight asserted. He encouraged
data professionals to use and follow a maturity model -- an assessment tool for evaluating an
organization's level of data prowess -- to help guide them to their next level of sophistication in
handling data.
"You're not going to just get a budget to flat-out 'increase data maturity,'" McKnight said. "The
leadership that's required of data professionals is to [increase data maturity], while, at the
same time, continuing to deliver business wins and to do it in a scalable fashion."
Don't just hire more people
If data professionals rely mainly on more staff and hardware to attack problems, McKnight
said they're basically going to remain static.
"Being a data professional is not being in the internal staffing business," McKnight said. "We
can't simply throw bodies at initiatives that everybody else in the company seems to come up
with. We need to be coming up with initiatives as well because only we have the foresight into
what the possibilities are out there."
Part of that foresight means that data professionals can no longer simply be asking business
users: "What may I do for you today?" They're responsible for proactively building the
applications of the future and incorporating new technologies to boost performance and user
satisfaction, McKnight said.
Page 5 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"You need to be constantly improving and raising that [technology] foundation," McKnight
said.
"Don't listen to the naysayers that would have us stay the course by saying 'Don't get in the
cloud. Don't embrace Agile development. Never mind the data lake, big data or Hadoop,'"
McKnight said. "That sort of mentality is starting to not play well in an enterprise."
In addition to avoiding that kind of negative mentality, data professionals should make a point
of closely following industry developments and keeping their own data science skills up to
date, while also continually assessing the most important trends in the marketplace. "You
cannot just chase any old trends and hope for the best," McKnight said.
▼ Next Article
Page 6 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
The evolving role of the chief data
officer
Sean Kerner
In a world filled with a seemingly limitless amount of data, the role of the chief data officer is
increasingly critical for organizations of all sizes.
The CDO role has expanded in recent years, found an IDC report on the state of the chief
data officer, based on a survey of 1,291 global organizations.
CDOs in the past had mostly been focused on data governance and compliance, but now are
also responsible for helping organizations use data to improve business operations, according
to the report, released Aug. 19 and sponsored by enterprise data integration vendor
Informatica.
The notion that the role of CDO has expanded in recent years also surfaced as a key topic at
the annual CDO Summer School that ran from July 30 to Sept. 3.
CDO Summer School started in 2018 and is run by data governance vendor Collibra in
partnership with the authors of The Chief Data Officer's Playbook, Caroline Carruthers and
Peter Jackson.
In an interview, Carruthers, chief executive of Northampton, U.K., IT consulting firm
Carruthers and Jackson, noted that the role of the CDO is still is a modern construct.
"Data has actually been around since the dawn of time," Carruthers said. "The practice of
actually managing data as an asset and looking after it as such is still relatively new."
Page 7 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
She said that in the today's digital economy, data
has become a foundational element for decision- Data has actually been
making. around since the dawn
Organizations still will often group in data of time. The practice of
management responsibilities with general IT actually managing data
operations, but that's less than ideal in as an asset and looking
Carruthers' view. Just because an organization
has an IT group, that doesn't mean that group after it as such, is still
was actually looking at the data and thinking relatively new.
about how to create more value for the
organization from tit. Chief executive,
Carruthers and Jackson
Where the role of CDO fits
Caroline Carruthers
in an organization
As a relatively new role, CDO reporting lines are
not uniform. Carruthers said she has seen all kinds of reporting structures, including having a
CDO report to a CTO, or to a CIO.
However, it doesn't matter too much who the CDO reports to as long the role is aligned with
the business, she said.
Meanwhile, Ela Wardowski, vice president and data governance lead for Comerica Bank, and
a graduate of the CDO Summer School, said the true role of the CDO is at the intersection of
business and technology.
Page 8 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"At the end of the day, the data has to align with the business processes," Wardowski said. "It
provides direction as well as the indicators for strategy and further development."
Tools to make the chief data officer role manageable
Part of making the most of data is having the right tools. Wardowski said that in her
experience, an enterprise data catalog is critical to provide a scalable and standard way to
define data.
A unified storage method, like a data lake, where an organization can centralize data, can be
another critical tool, Wardowski said. Simply using a data lake isn't enough, though.
Organizations also should have a defined set of processes for how data is centralized and
what governance policies will be put in place, she said.
Going a step further, it's important to use some form of data profiling tool to identify data
quality, Wardowski said.
"You have to put in place the data quality rules and measure them so that you have some
kind of scorecard that you can understand what the quality is," she said.
Key challenges for the role of CDO
Data quality is one of the biggest challenges overall for chief data officers, according to
Carruthers.
Organizations often want to jump straight to the exciting data science and analytics aspects of
data, without first laying the right foundation, she said. That helps ensure that the data being
analyzed is actually of good quality and is useful and accurate.
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 "It doesn't matter how wonderful a model you have, if you feed it total garbage, you're going to
In this e-guide really struggle get anything useful out of it," Carruthers said.

• Expert urges data pros to For Wardowski, the big challenge is the sustainability of the role of CDO itself.

hone data science skills "Some people think you put the role in place, the problems get solved and you move on, but
the role of CDO is really a strategic role," she said. "The CDO has to be a strong partner at
• The evolving role of the the executive suite level."
chief data officer

• Chief data officer role now ▼ Next Article

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

Page 10 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Chief data officer role now well-
entrenched, says Gartner
Beverley Head,
The global population of chief data officers (CDOs) has grown 100-fold – to 10,000 – over the
past decade as enterprises around the world race to exploit their data reserves.
According to vice-president and Gartner fellow Debra Logan, the CDO role is now well-
entrenched among organisations seeking to fully exploit their data.
Almost a third (30%) of respondents to Gartner’s fourth global CDO survey report directly to
the CEO or equivalent “because the CEO is interested in revenue and risk”, which data could
impact, said Logan.
To maintain that executive interest, Logan warned CDOs not to disappear into what he called
a “data quality blackhole” where a disproportionate amount of time and budget is invested on
cleaning data collections from which data is generated.
Releasing the first cut of its 2018 CDO survey in Sydney recently, Logan noted that
investment in the area remains strong. In the past year, three out of five CDOs reported an
increase in headcount while 53% said they had an increase in budget.
Some 7% of survey respondents are based in Asia-Pacific, but Gartner has not yet broken out
any regional or country data from the survey.
At the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney, Logan said the average budget for data
analytics was $600,000, which she said seemed surprisingly low.
Page 11 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Another surprise was that only 8% of organisations were measuring the value of information
assets as though they were on the balance sheet – even though 17% said that they were
already selling or licensing data.
Almost one in five organisations (19%) still have no form of valuation of their data assets.
Delegates were reminded that whatever they invested in data analytics, it was enterprise
culture that had the biggest impact on success. Some 39% of survey respondents nominated
cultural challenge to accept change as the main blocker for data analytics success.
When the culture is supportive, progress is easier. In a panel session focused on fostering
data-driven cultural change, Marek Rucinski, deputy commissioner of the smarter data
programme at the Australian Taxation Office, said analytics – driven by the business because
of the perceived value of analytics – was now past the point of no return.
At Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers, Alan Lowthorpe, general manager of advanced
analytics, said data and digital were among the top three strategic priorities for the group,
adding that achieving a business pull rather than relying on an analytics push was key to
sustained success.
“Data and analytics need to be interwoven with the organisation,” he said. “What you are
trying to do is build a muscle that the business can flex.”
But Lowthorpe also stressed the need for the business to capture, analyse and use data
appropriately while guarding against unintended consequences. CDOs, he said, had to “help
business understand what it is and what it can and can’t do”.
▼ Next Article
Page 12 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
10 chief data officer trends that are
reshaping the role
George Lawton, Contributor
The chief data officer role is still one of the newest C-suite titles, but it's been around for over
15 years. Over that time, the role has grown from being a novel position in a few specialized
areas, such as banking and finance, to a mainstay in a wide variety of fields. This reflects a
growing recognition across industries that data is valuable and that the CDO can help drive
data strategy and build a data-driven culture to support this.
In the early days, CDOs helped reduce the workload from the IT department in managing the
data infrastructure. More and more, the CDO plays a role in finding ways to use data to
streamline the business and pursue new opportunities that use data. The CDO also needs to
balance these opportunities against the liabilities of data breaches and new privacy
requirements like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Here are 10 chief data officer trends experts see evolving the role.
1. Navigating a changing a situation
With impact of COVID-19, every business needs to adapt to stay alive and continue to profit.
One of the top chief data officer trends over the coming year will be navigating rapidly
changing business realities. All existing data management projects should be reconsidered in
the wake of the pandemic.
Page 13 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
"CDOs that were planning to do nothing but a data lake project for the rest of 2020 are going
to have a rude awakening -- they'll quickly turn their team into a cost center that provides no
value to the business," said Arijit Sengupta, founder and CEO of Aible, an AI platform.
Sengupta said BI projects have focused on past trends that are no longer relevant.
Meanwhile, older AI models need to be constantly recalibrated as the economy moves
through different phases of reopening. CDOs will need to look toward augmented intelligence
that involves a closer collaboration between people and AI to learn and react faster than
competitors.

• Chief data officer role now

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

Page 14 of 29
In this e-guide

• Expert urges data pros to

hone data science skills

• The evolving role of the

chief data officer

• Chief data officer role now

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

Page 15 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
2. Providing a better roadmap
The constantly changing situation around COVID-19 will also drive chief data officer trends
around understanding the business environment.
"The best CDOs will be business thinkers who are able to provide organizational roadmaps
that allow companies to compete in the new economy using data, AI, machine learning,
information security and well-trained data scientists," said Gildas Bah, founder and CEO of
American Business Data Science, a data science training program.
These roadmaps will require cultural change at the top of the organization along with a plan
for upskilling the workforce and new ways to lead, work and collaborate virtually.
3. Applying analytics
CDOs need to find ways to bring different types of analytics into the enterprise to improve
internal processes, create new products and prioritize the best current opportunities.
"To keep up with the growth of [the] digital economy and make forward-thinking business
decisions, CDOs will rely on data analytics heavily in order to interpret data concepts more
accurately and map data-driven insights with business priorities," said Ilia Sotnikov, vice
president of product management at Netwrix, a data security tools provider. This will turn a
CDO into a chief data analytics officer (CDAO).
4. More focus on automation
Some experts believe the CDO will morph into a role that is more focused on finding ways to
automate various aspects of the business.
Page 16 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
John Bates, CEO of Eggplant, a software testing tools provider, said the CDO role is rapidly
disappearing as it's too narrow in terms of responsibilities. To compete, organizations need C-
level leadership to navigate an era where businesses must pivot to everything digital. This
requires enterprises to either redirect CIOs to be more business-focused or create a new
strategic role -- typically a chief automation officer (CAO) -- to be the catalyst for driving the
roadmap for data and automation.
The CAO is responsible for accelerating the pace of transformation by establish a strategic
vision for automation across the enterprise.
"Organizations that fail to invest in this unifying leadership role or rely only on a CDO run the
risk of being left behind by Industry 4.0," Bates said.
5. Manage a data factory
The CDO was originally created as a way of focusing more executive attention outside the
traditional purview of the CIO.
Chris Bergh, CEO of DataKitchen, a DataOps analytics maker, said a CDO trend is
automating the data and operations pipeline in the same way DevOps modernized application
development. He said data analytics resembles a manufacturing process where data
continuously flows in from sources, undergoes transformation and powers analytics and
machine learning applications. Bergh said the CDO role oversees this data pipeline,
optimizing analytics creation and deployment and managing quality.
The challenge is that most data science and machine learning projects fail to deliver on their
promise. As a result, the average tenure of a CDO is currently only about two and a half
years. This situation will improve as CDOs learn to employ automation that reduces analytics
cycle time and eliminates data and analytics errors.
Page 17 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"In the long run, CIOs will continue to manage enterprise-critical business applications, but
CDOs will manage the data factory and provide the vision and leadership required to
continuously improve the use of data to further an enterprise's mission," Bergh said.
6. From liability to opportunity
Kenneth Sanford, principal at Distill Data Science, a data science consultancy, said GDPR
and CCPA accentuated the need for CDOs to focus on limiting the potential downsides of
data. However, COVID-19 and the resulting economic pressure are driving CDOs to focus on
the potential of using data opportunistically.
This could affect the qualities boards look for as they bring on new candidates. CDOs have
primarily had legal backgrounds, due in part to many CEOs seeing data as a liability. Sanford
said that this has been a mistake.
"Those with legal backgrounds lack meaningful training in working with and understanding
data," Sanford said. To take advantage of the opportunistic aspects of data, CDOs should
have a formal education in data analysis.
When business leaders truly understand the context data is created in, they see the potential
to explain and predict outcomes that create business value, such as increasing customer
satisfaction scores, reducing churn and more.
"These skills can be taught to business leaders, and it doesn't involve any sophisticated math
or computer science or even a computer," Sanford said. "It requires curiosity and a desire to
explain outcomes."
Analytics-first thinkers are opportunistic with data. Up-sell and cross-sell models are created
by looking at what customers have purchased in the past and create look-alike customers for
Page 18 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
whom limited data exists. This often means collecting, storing and processing a lot of
personally identifiable information (PII).
The legal-first CDO will be quick to limit or eliminate potential PII issues, whereas the
opportunistic CDO will look for creative ways to use these data sets within the spirit of the
applicable laws. Having a deep understanding of the methods of analytics is required for this.
7. Creating competitive Data is also the new
differentiation asbestos. If
organizations don't use
A few years ago, CDOs heavily focused on data
governance and management of packaged data responsibly, there
analytics software. will continue to be data
breaches that impact
"Now, they increasingly emphasize innovative
data science pilots which could increase consumers, and there
competitive differentiation, often in a company's are longer-term impacts
product itself," said Aron Kuehnemann, vice
president of Diffbot, a knowledge graph platform. on overall enterprise
He has seen more CDOs have data partnership value and business
teams, even in nontech companies. reputation.
More organizations are formalizing ways to
license or partner around their company data
CEO and co-founder,
sets. As they do, the market will coalesce around Baffle
clearer value and pricing models for different data
types. It's difficult to place a consistent dollar Ameesh Divatia
value on data in general.
Page 19 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"A great irony in a world where everyone talks about the 'value of data' is that most people
don't know how much it's worth in terms of their ROI or how much they should pay for which
types of data," Kuehnemann said.
As the buyers and sellers of data formalize their roles, the market will determine easier ways
to value data, but it probably won't ever be as consistent as a software user licenses.
8. Ensuring visibility and awareness
New data governance regulations are driving CDOs to understand different types of data and
their location.
"The CDO is best positioned to be the single point of responsibility for ensuring an
organization fully understands the sources of its data, how it's handled, why it's handled and
what boundaries and limitations exist," said Stephen Cavey, co-founder and chief evangelist
of Ground Labs, a data discovery tools provider. Without this holistic view and central point of
control, a business will struggle to maintain adequate control of existing and new data being
collected and whether broader implications exist.
Today's CDO must be internally aware of data handling activities and aware of where the data
comes from in terms of geography. They must become externally aware of data-centric laws
in each market the organization operates and collects data from. Cavey said this is critical as
organizations often only acknowledge and maintain awareness of laws where they have a
presence, not necessarily laws related to all data sources collected.
9. Using data responsibly
CDOs must find ways to balance data opportunities with data liabilities.
Page 20 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
"Data is also the new asbestos," said Ameesh Divatia, CEO and co-founder of Baffle, a data
protection tools provider. "If organizations don't use data responsibly, there will continue to be
data breaches that impact consumers, and there are longer-term impacts on overall
enterprise value and business reputation."
GDPR and CCPA have created a need for CDOs to implement processes to determine what
is PII in the mounds of data within an enterprise. They also need to train employees on
privacy regulations and implement procedures for compliance with data privacy laws.
A CDO should be aware of -- and communicate -- any regulations relevant to that company
and their customers' industries.
"The CDO should also be in lock-step with the chief privacy officer and the CISO to ensure a
company's strong security posture," Divatia said.
10. Role expands into other verticals
Perhaps the most important of chief data officer trends Andi Mann, chief technology advocate
at Splunk, a stream processing platform, expects to see is more enterprises hiring CDOs.
Many businesses are finding new ways to make or save money by taking a more
sophisticated approach to collecting, managing and analyzing data.
Organizations in the technology, finance and retail spaces generally utilize the data they have
on hand to increase revenues and drive higher customer engagement. Mann said
manufacturing, healthcare, the public sector and higher education have traditionally lacked
the leadership to operationalize their data and have lost out on valuable business and growth
opportunities.
Page 21 of 29
 "We expect to see more organizations across verticals adopt CDOs in the coming years, as
In this e-guide organizations increasingly recognize the profound impact data can have, especially when
integrated throughout every level of an organization," Mann said.
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
▼ Next Article
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer

• Chief data officer role now

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

Page 22 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Data management roles: Data
architect vs. data engineer, others
Evelyn Bleed, Editorial Assistant
As more organizations become aware of the central role data plays in their business
processes, there's more demand for skilled workers to handle various data management
tasks. But there's also more confusion around the differences between positions like data
architect, data modeler and data engineer, and which data management roles are most
valuable to an organization.
Michael Bowers, chief architect at NoSQL database vendor FairCom Corp., sought to cut
through some of that confusion during a session at Dataversity's inaugural Data Architecture
Online event. The online conference focused on key strategies and technologies that are
needed in order to build and manage a modern data architecture.
In his session, Bowers, who has more than 30 years of experience as a data professional,
compared eight data management and analytics jobs in particular, including their key
functions, their salaries and the technical skills they require. He also offered advice on how to
increase one's salary in the data management field and how organizations should go about
building a data management team.
The job descriptions and salaries, which are averages from across the U.S., come from job
sites glassdoor.com, indeed.com and payscale.com, as well as Bowers' own work experience.
He noted that he has held, managed or led projects involving all of the data management
roles he discussed except for data scientist.
Page 23 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
The differences between data management jobs
The positions bringing more value to the business -- like data architects, data modelers and
data scientists -- are harder to fill, Bowers said. That's because people in those positions
generally need to be more familiar with cutting-edge technology than other data management
workers are.
How do these data management roles compare? Data architects design and help implement
database systems and other repositories for corporate data, Bowers said. They're also
responsible for ensuring that organizations comply with internal and external regulations on
data, and for evaluating and recommending new technologies, he added.
Bowers described a data architect as a "know-it-all" who has to be familiar with different
databases and other data management tools, as well as use cases, technology costs and
limitations, and industry trends. "I had to master a ton of technologies to become a data
architect," he said.
A data modeler identifies business rules and entities in data sets and designs data models for
databases and other systems to help reduce data redundancy and improve data integration,
according to Bowers. Data modelers make less money on average than many other IT
workers, but you get what you pay for, he cautioned.
"It's hard to find a good data modeler," Bowers said. "It's an art. Anyone who says you can
just throw data into a computer and get a good model out automatically is wrong."
Software engineers who are also good at data modeling can deliver the best results, he
added, though it typically is more expensive to hire them.
Page 24 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Big data focus for data engineers, data scientists
A data engineer is essentially a BI engineer for big data, Bowers said. Data engineers build
data pipelines connecting databases and big data systems, and like data architects, they must
understand the intricacies of various cloud and on-premises technologies.
But in dealing with big data, data engineers can often be distracted by those technologies
rather than focus on delivering business value, Bowers said. "They just spend all their time
playing and not getting [things] done."
Meanwhile, data scientists -- who find, prepare and analyze data using machine learning
algorithms and other advanced analytics applications -- can deliver problematic results
without proper knowledge and application of statistical principles, which Bowers described as
the foundation of data science.
Developing, testing and validating predictive models "really does take a Ph.D.-level
statistician," he said. "It's really easy for people to claim they're data scientists and not know
anything about statistics."
Page 25 of 29
In this e-guide

• Expert urges data pros to

hone data science skills

• The evolving role of the

chief data officer

• Chief data officer role now

well-entrenched, says
Gartner

• 10 chief data officer trends

that are reshaping the role

• Data management roles:

Data architect vs. data
engineer, others

Page 26 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Overlapping skills in data management positions
Data management roles can also easily overlap on skills, Bowers said. For example, in larger
enterprises, database administrators (DBAs) often are specialized to the point where they just
develop, operate and administer databases. But in many small companies, a DBA is more of
a "catch-all" employee who also does data quality, modeling, analysis and reporting.
Nonetheless, Bowers said DBAs are often undervalued for the work they do. At an average
base salary of about $81,000, a typical DBA makes less than all the other data management
positions he discussed except for a data quality engineer ($74,000) and a data analyst
($67,000).
"The skill level required to be a DBA, especially an Oracle DBA, is so high that [their salary
level] is just insulting to me," Bowers said. "It really bothers me they are making so little
compared to what it takes to become a DBA."
However, DBAs who focus only on operational tasks are putting themselves in a tough
position, Bowers warned. Such DBAs have been around a long time, so they are easier to
find, but he said their business value is lessening as automated database administration,
driven by machine learning and advanced analytics, becomes more prevalent.
"They do things by hand, and they aren't pushing themselves to do new things," Bowers said.
"If you're an operational DBA, move away from that as quickly as possible and toward
modeling or development or BI engineering."
Page 27 of 29
In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
Top salaries and how to boost them
The highest average base salary Bowers cited is $124,000 for a data architect. That's
followed by a data scientist and a data engineer at $117,000, a BI engineer at $106,000 and a
data modeler at $91,000.
These salaries differ based partly on a position's value to the company. For example, Bowers
said data engineers and BI engineers have similar functions, but data engineers will make
around $10,000 more because of their greater familiarity with new technologies and
processes.
Bowers concluded his pay analysis by explaining how data professionals can increase their
salaries. His first piece of advice: have a deep knowledge of a wide variety of technologies.
Statistics, machine learning and new technical skills are particularly valuable, he said.
Working more closely with IT managers is also beneficial, Bowers added. He said data
architects make more money than the other positions partly because they've gained the trust
of IT management through direct interactions.
The key, Bowers said, is to push yourself to master whatever technology comes your way.
"Know it inside and out, apply it and then move on to something else," he said. "You'll be
amazed over the decades what you can master and accomplish. But you can't do it working
40 hours a week. You can work for your company 40 hours a week, but you should spend 10
to 20 hours a week mastering things beyond your current job."
Which positions to fill first
In building a data management team, some positions should take priority over others, Bowers
said when wrapping up his conference session. The "go-to positions" he thinks organizations
Page 28 of 29

In this e-guide
• Expert urges data pros to
hone data science skills
• The evolving role of the
chief data officer
• Chief data officer role now
well-entrenched, says
Gartner
• 10 chief data officer trends
that are reshaping the role
• Data management roles:
Data architect vs. data
engineer, others
should fill -- with workers straight out of college, if possible -- are data analysts, BI engineers
and data quality engineers. DBAs are also a must, he said.
By relying on them to do much of the hands-on work, you can minimize the number of data
engineers, data scientists and data architects you have to hire, Bowers said, describing that
as the most cost-effective way to staff up on the various data management roles.
But you need to find "really good people" for the latter positions, he cautioned. Otherwise, you
could end up filling those key jobs with employees who "can talk circles around you and you
don't even know that they're just blowing smoke at you," Bowers said. "You've got to hire
people that you trust and who know what they're talking about."
About searchDataManagement.com
SearchDataManagement.com is a knowledge guide for data management professionals and
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With the ever-growing volume of internal and external data flooding into businesses, educated
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