uncommon to have an overseer role with a single title 

— commonly, data engi-

neer. A database administrator, analyst, or even a BI professional can easily tran-
sition into the data engineer role, as long as they grasp the requirements of the
people, processes, and technologies used to sift through the data.

Data scientist
Data scientists are seldom responsible for managing infrastructure. Most data
scientists don’t usually install much software, either. The data scientist is laser
focused on creating and executing advanced analytics to extract the data from the
systems put in place by the business analysts, data analysts, data engineers, and
database administrators. As I explain later in this chapter, the data scientists per-
form analytics routines on descriptive, diagnostic, prescriptive, predictive, and
cognitive data. Whether the analysis conducted is quantitative using statistical
tooling or machine learning functionality to detect patterns and anomalies or the
data requires qualitative evaluation, the end goal is the same: to create a well-
built model.

Building data models with analytics is only part of a data scientist’s responsibility.
As the world of machine learning and artificial intelligence continues to thrive,
the data scientist is tasked with exploring deep learning and performing experi-
ments with complex data problems with various coding languages using algorith-
mic techniques. They must be heavily vested in understanding programming
languages that can transform data that may otherwise be obscure or otherwise
difficult to exploit.

It’s no secret that most of the time spent by a data scientist is on addressing issues
related to fixing data, also known as data wrangling. By having a team, the data
scientist can often speed up the process. Better yet, by using tools, such as Power
BI, that automate many of the roles in the business intelligence and data science
lifecycle, the data scientist can more easily address the questions that require
answers.

Database administrator
Your database administrator handles implementing and managing the database
infrastructure. In some organizations, the database is entirely cloud enabled. Leg-
acy organizations, on the other hand, have often kept their database on-premises
or in a state of flux, resulting in a hybrid data platform deployment. When using
Power BI, you’ll likely have your database administrator build solutions on top of
Microsoft Azure-based data services, including Microsoft Azure SQL.

26 PART 1 Put Your BI Thinking Caps On