Best Data Science Certifications 2024: Chart Your Data Path!

What Is a Data Science Certification?

When planning to take a data science certification, you have various options. In most situations, individuals prefer getting certification or qualification from a well-recognized university. However, there are several other certification options available.

A data science certification is crafted to provide individuals with the ultimate benefit over other competitors in the industry. Hence, by availing of a data science certificate, individuals inherit complex skills and boost those skills, which makes them a highly preferred option for recruiters. Through this certification, you present your potential to employers, who examine you to provide you with the responsibility of the data for the prosperity and growth of their business.

Benefits of Data Science Certifications

A data science certification is not only crafted to teach you new skills but offers several other helpful benefits.

Career Advancement

Whether you are starting your career in data science or have been in one for multiple years, you must acknowledge the key information and skills required to move ahead in this field. Hence, obtaining a data science certification is the best option to stand strong in the competition, as it showcases your knowledge and ability to employers, making you a better candidate.

Data Science Training

Data scientist skills are highly in demand due to the exciting job opportunities in this field. Hence, a growing number of data scientists need to develop their technical skills. Data science training helps individuals gain hands-on practice, eventually leading to the practical application of their knowledge and skills, helping them learn better. 

Credibility

Once you gain a data science certification from a well-acknowledged program or university, you become credible in the eyes of recruiters. Your certification becomes a credible and authentic proof of your knowledge and skills, making you a better candidate in the job market than other data science professionals.

Employability

Investing in a data science education program proves your seriousness and dedication toward your career and professional development. With a certificate, you showcase your advanced knowledge and skills to employers, making you a highly valuable employee. 

Highlighting Expertise

A data science certification displays all your skills and knowledge. A higher number of skills indicates your proficiency and expertise, which determines your job position and responsibilities. Hence, a data science certificate highlights your expertise in this field.  

Structured Learning

A structured learning program for data science provides multiple benefits, which are important for a striving data scientist. Firstly, it gives students access to the most needed information to boost their success. The structured education program covers all the data science fundamentals so that the students can keenly focus on how to learn the essential skills instead of acquiring them in parts. Moreover, a well-crafted program lets students become more familiar with practical working on statistical software as each lesson comes with exercises and sample questions, teaching students the use of programs effectively.

Competitive Advantage in the Job Market

With a data science certification, you get the advantage of being prioritized by the recruiters amongst the other competitors. When approaching a certain job or promotion opportunity, candidates with a certificate are highly preferred over the ones not having a certificate in data science. 

Competitive Pay

Every individual looks towards career growth in two major ways: position promotion and salary increment. The same goes for data science professionals. In this competitive field, the pay structure is also competitive. However, to land a well-paid position, you must prove your worth. A data science certification helps you present yourself as a valuable asset for the organization, eventually leading to a better-paid position.

Career as a Data Science Engineer

A data science engineering professional is responsible for designing and building systems to collect, store, and analyze large amounts of data. 

Organizations gather huge sets of data, and by hiring an expert data scientist or an analyst and implementing the right technology, organizations get valuable information out of this data, which is later used to make big and better data-driven decisions, leading to the growth of a particular company.

Some major and common responsibilities of a data scientist or analyst include the following:

• Gather the data aligning with the needs of the business.
• Support the data streaming systems development.
• Implement updated systems for business intelligence and data analytics operations.
• Craft business intelligence reports for the company's advisors.
• Create algorithms to convert the data into actionable, useful information.
• Understand the objectives of the company by collaborating with the management.
• Build new data analysis tools and data validation methods.
• Ensure compliance with the security policies and data governance.

Working in a small organization means taking responsibility for several data-related activities and tasks. Many large companies hire data engineers to create data pipelines. However, other companies focus on data warehouse management and table scheme creation to track data storage.

With the required knowledge and skills, an individual can build a rewarding data engineering career. Several data engineers come from an information technology, computer science, or applied mathematics background. However, a formal degree or an authentic and valuable certification can help you build a strong foundation to handle infrastructure and data tasks like an expert. It is also advisable to go for a postgraduate degree when building a career in data engineering to upskill your career and unlock better-paying positions.

Best Data Science Certifications of 2024

Some of the top data science certifications include:

1. Simplilearn’s Post Graduate Program In Data Science

Ranked No. 1 by Economic Times, the Post Graduate Program In Data Science is in collaboration with IBM and Purdue University. 

It helps aspiring data scientists to supercharge their data science careers by gaining in-depth knowledge of ML, Python, Tableau, Explainable AI, Generative AI, and more. With masterclasses by Purdue faculty and IBM experts, the program spans 11 months and follows an online bootcamp format. A bachelor's degree with an average of 50% or higher marks, in addition to a basic understanding of programming concepts and mathematics, is preferred for this course.

Benefit from practical experience through 25+ hands-on projects and 20+ tools with integrated labs and elevate your data science skills. It is the best data science certification online.

2. Professional Certificate Course in Data Science by IIT Kanpur

Considered the best Data Science course in India, this certification is your key to staying ahead of the data science curve. Simplilearn, in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, presents essential skills like statistics, Python, ML, Tableau, generative AI, and prompt engineering. 

Spanning 11 months in an online bootcamp format, it features live classes by industry experts and masterclasses by distinguished IIT-Kanpur faculty. Get hands-on experience by working on 25+ projects and 20+ tools in integrated labs. Additionally, benefit from Simplilearn Career Assistance, craft a stellar resume and fast-track your career.

3. Applied Data Science with Python Course

The Applied Data Science with Python course helps one easily become proficient in using the leading Python tools and techniques for data analytics. During the course, participants will learn statistics, feature engineering, data science, data analysis, data visualization, and data wrangling.

The course is designed in a blended learning format, where participants can engage in both self-paced and instructor-based learning. The course consists of 60+ hours of blended learning with lifetime access to the content. With expert live sessions, students learn interactively with Jupyter Notebooks labs. Furthermore, the course has several assisted practices, lesson-wise knowledge tests, and industry-based projects for practical learning.

4. Data Scientist Master’s Program

Ranked as one of the top courses by several sites worldwide, this Data Science Master’s Program is designed for data science aspirants with the leading professionals at IBM. This Data Science course advances your career by providing excellent learning necessary for success. Acquire proficiency in cutting-edge technologies such as ChatGPT, generative AI, Python, SQL, Microsoft Excel, machine learning, Tableau, and more.

Attend masterclasses, hackathons, and Ask Me Anything sessions with experts at IBM. This comprehensive course has 25+ industry-relevant hands-on projects based on real-life situations on leading tools like MySQL, PowerBI, SciPy, DALL.E 2, seaborn, ChatGPT, and more. Once the course is completed successfully, each participant is awarded an industry-recognized certificate of completion from Simplilearn. To advance your data science profession, thoroughly explore the technicalities of data interpretation, understand machine learning concepts, and improve your programming skills with this master's program.

5. Caltech Post Graduate Program In Data Science

Leveraging Caltech's academic preeminence, this PGP in Data Science covers key data science concepts through a collaborative learning model with live sessions led by international professionals. This postgraduate program by Simplilearn is ranked as the top PG data science program by AIM. The students get to attend live sessions with Caltech professors and IBM experts. The course helps aspiring students gain comprehensive and industry-relevant knowledge on data science topics, programming, machine learning, data visualization, ChatGPT, prompt engineering, generative AI, and data analytics concepts.

With this world's number 1 bootcamp program, earn a certificate of completion from Caltech CTME. Furthermore, with Simplilearn’s career assistance program, JobAssist, get easily noticed by the top companies. Access masterclasses, Ask Me Anything sessions with IBM experts, and hackathons, along with interactive sessions on the latest AI trends. With 25+ hands-on projects, gain real-world experience on the latest and seamless integrated updated tools.

Are these Certifications Hard to Get?

The field of data science evolves continuously and hence needs constant learning. For beginners, the challenges in this field are major. However, if they are well-versed with computer science basics, mathematics, and programming languages, their learning process can turn into an easy one. Hence, being an individual with familiar knowledge of the field, data science certification will not be a hard endeavor for you. 

Eligibility Criteria

To become eligible for a data science program, an individual must hold a bachelor's degree in science or engineering. Moreover, students must have basic knowledge of math and statistics. For an undergraduate data science course, students must score above 50% marks in their class 12th examinations and have statistics, computer science, or math as their core subjects.

Become a Data Scientist through hands-on learning with hackathons, masterclasses, webinars, and Ask-Me-Anything! Start learning now!

Conclusion

Learners must prepare with basic computer and statistics knowledge before beginning their career in data science. Simplilearn provides the most well-structured data science learning program for candidates seeking the best data science certification course. Review the popular data science certification programs and pick the one that aligns with your career aspirations. Ride the wave of automation and transformation. Enroll in the best Online Data Science courses and qualify for a better tomorrow!

Are you interested in a transformative journey toward mastering data science? Enrol in Simplilearn's Data Scientist Masters Program which equips you with the profound knowledge and skills required to excel in the dynamic field of data science and analytics.

FAQs 

1. Why should I get certified in data science?

Data science certification allows you to develop the required skills in your industry and polish your data science knowledge so that hiring managers and recruiters will know your worth before hiring you.

2. Do I need a technical background for data science certifications?

Even though you can only get a data science certification without a technical background, having a background in statistics, computer science, or mathematics is beneficial to understanding the concepts and information clearly. Moreover, some data science certifications require a technical background; others don't.

3. How do I choose the right data science certification for me?

When choosing the right data science certification, choose courses that include major topics: exploratory data analysis, data manipulation, data visualization, machine learning, big data, processing, and statistical modeling. Moreover, prefer courses that offer hands-on experience with no most used data science applications like SQL and Python.

4. What kind of jobs can I get with a data science certification?

With a data science certification, you can get jobs as a data analyst, big data engineer, data architect, data scientist, statistician, business intelligence analyst, or data modeler.

5. How much do data science certifications cost?

A data science certification course fee is not fixed and varies from organization to organization.