Category: Big Data Reviews

Introduction

I am Christian Lopez, a cognitive neuroscience graduate from UC San Diego, equipped with strong problem-solving skills and collaborative abilities. With a keen interest in data science, I’ve honed my expertise in various areas including data acquisition, statistical analysis, and machine learning. Currently serving as a data scientist at a prominent bank in Las Vegas, I embarked on the PGP in Data Engineering-Purdue program offered by Simplilearn to further advance my career and gain hands-on experience in data engineering projects.

My Professional Journey

After completing my bachelor’s degree, I pursued a data science bootcamp online and secured a position as a data analyst at a financial institution. My journey eventually led me to my current role as a data scientist at a bank, where I find immense fulfillment in leveraging data to drive insights and decision-making processes.

Career Impact of Completing the Course

Completing the data engineering program opened up new opportunities and projects in my current role. Additionally, it contributed to a significant salary hike of 10-15%, reflecting the value and impact of the skills acquired through the program.

As documented by Gayathri Ramesh

I have the zeal to learn different skills to upgrade myself. Once I came across the responsibilities and job requirements of a data analyst, I was driven to learn this skill and make a shift from an EMM Trading Tool Analyst position.

The Journey

I completed my master’s in Electrical Engineering from New York University. Following this, I got an offer letter for an EMM Trading Tool Analyst at SGCIB in 2017. After working here for some time, I felt the need to upgrade myself and learn the skills needed for a data analyst role. For this purpose, I chose the Data Analytics course from Simplilearn. After completing this course, my manager saw the potential in me and helped me shift to the data analyst position in the organisation.

Later I pursued Big Data Hadoop and Spark Developer courses from Simplilearn and got selected to be an Associate Data Engineer at Publicis Sapient.

The Challenges

I was driven to learn data science to upgrade my skills for the role of data analytics when I learned about this domain from my friends and colleagues. Eventually, I wanted to shift to this sector to improve my career prospects. To upskill myself, I started searching for online platforms that offered the best data analytics certification. When I compared the course features of Simplilearn with other platforms, I found Simplilearn to be the best. Therefore, I started my learning. 

Simplilearn Solution

My experience with Simplilearn was great. I faced some issues with the course completion date, and I am thankful the support team extended the course completion deadline, which offered me great flexibility. 

As I was a complete beginner in the chosen course, I was skeptical if I would be able to understand all the concepts. However, the course was well-structured, and the instructors explained every topic in the simplest way. This helped me complete the course with a thorough understanding.

As documented by Ney Fred Jimenez Campos.

I am Ney Fred Jimenez Campos, a computer science engineer from The University of Costa Rica, residing in Costa Rica. I have primarily been working for the healthcare sector, with companies focused on leveraging technology and medical products to enhance patient care. In addition to my healthcare experience, I have also worked at the Costa Rica Central Bank, where I conducted manual and automated QA testing for automated server deployment.

Enrollment Decision and Career Goals:

Having a keen curiosity and a strong drive to learn, I am always seeking new challenges and opportunities for personal and professional growth. My expertise lies in various areas, including IT, QA testing, databases, process reports, documentation, and industrial processes for creating and streamlining products within workflows.

Presently, I hold the position of a System Business Analyst at GSK, a prominent Pharmaceutical Manufacturing company, specifically in the contract operations department. I secured this position after successfully completing the Professional Certificate Program In Data Engineering from Simplilearn. In my current role, I am responsible for supporting continuous operations by overseeing data creation, reviewing and generating financial, commercial, and customer bill reports, and ensuring smooth business operations.

Furthermore, I actively contribute to maintaining the operational continuity of SAP business applications. I engage in QA activities, participate in SAP system enhancements, and act as a systems analyst liaison between analysts and other business units or clients. Currently, I am also involved in QA efforts related to the migration of SAP to the Azure cloud, conducting comprehensive test cases to ensure seamless processes.

As documented by Jorge Mario Guzmán Olaya

I have over 20 years of experience in data management. I first came across Simplilearn’s courses during the pandemic when I wanted to know more about the tech domain and take advantage of the data science boom.

At that time, I was working with Smith’s Detection as a program and channel partner manager. My job was to recruit and maintain relationships with channel partners and to design commercial strategies. While studying channel partners, I handled a lot of data and wanted to find an effective way to streamline my work. Simplilearn’s Big Data Hadoop & Spark Developer online course helped me accomplish that. 

Upskilling is Part of Career Growth

I started upskilling myself 11 years ago and have continually applied the new skills and knowledge acquired to the job. I believe upskilling is necessary to thrive and grow in one’s career. 

I have taken several other courses with Simplilearn, such as Data Science with Python, Data Science with R, ITIL 4, Tableau, and Professional Certificate Program in AI and Machine Learning. My LinkedIn profile gets views, and interviewers are impressed with my resume wherever I apply. Six months after completing Simplilearn’s Big Data Hadoop & Spark Developer in October 2021, I started working as a partner manager with Simetrik, a Colombia-based FinTech start-up.

Applying New Skills

I have been able to apply the knowledge I gained from Simplilearn’s Big Data course at my current job. As a partner manager, I help provide my company with the vision to grow outside the commercial space by recruiting partners in Latin America. This recruiting process requires a lot of data analysis, and I have to see how many companies are willing to become partners and review their numbers. Once I finish recruiting, I will be working to grow the partnership, including working on a lot of data. 

After I took Simplilearn’s Big Data course, I was able to solve a problem for my previous company. We were unsure how to evaluate the performance of channel partners on a year-on-year basis. We had sales data, but it was not a complete picture of the channel partners’ performance.

As documented by Asghar Zubair

I am an IT professional who resides in Ontario, Canada. I have a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Western, as well as 17 years of experience in the IT industry, mainly in SQL servers. I wanted to change my domain to big data for a while now and after a lot of research, I chose Simplilarn’s Post Graduate Program in Data Engineering in association with Purdue University.

The Need to Upskill

When I started a new job as a big data engineer, moving from SQL servers to big data was a big challenge for me. I realized that I need to upgrade my skills in several areas, so I enrolled myself in the Professional Certification Program in Data Engineering in collaboration with Purdue University. 

Career Impact

Before taking this course, I was having a hard time with big data and was facing issues in performing my tasks. Upon course completion, my performance improved and I received a five percent increment in my salary.  I feel that I became well-versed with the big data ins and outs, and this course has tremendously helped me in upgrading my skill sets. 

As documented by Ankita C

Excerpt: Upskilling with Simplilearn’s Professional Certificate Program In Data Engineering helped me get a new job at VMWare, with a 110% salary hike. I always heard people talk about upskilling and how it can change their careers, but I always had doubts. I don’t know why I decided to take the chance to upskill, but I’m so glad I did – believe me when I say it was a life-changing experience.

I always enjoyed learning new things, but I never believed that I should actually take a course until I stumbled upon Simplilearn!

The Journey

My professional journey began in 2017 as a Project Trainee at the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). After that, I joined Mindtree as an Azure consultant. I have been working in Azure hybrid cloud storage, providing required resolutions by reviewing support packages and troubleshooting the fixes if needed. I assist customers in performing online and offline migration of data to Azure. In addition to that, I have hands-on experience installing Kubernetes by creating AKS clusters on the user’s environment and resolving queries. While I was happy, I knew I wanted to learn more, mainly about Databricks. I yearned for knowledge, and this is what led me to Simplilearn.

As documented by Aditya Shivam

Right from the start, I was always looking toward the future. I started out as a software engineer, but was fascinated with the seemingly endless possibilities in data science and artificial intelligence (AI). I knew these interrelated fields would be the way of the future and I wanted to become a part of it. Undergraduate technology degrees provide a broad basis of knowledge, but it was up to me to hone my skills and specialize in a given niche.

For me, that niche turned out to be big data and AI. All I needed was the right combination of practical, hands-on skills to get started. This is the story of how I prepared for the challenges I created for myself, including the crucial role of finding the right educational platform.

The Challenge: Making a Lateral Move from Software to Data

My career never felt right to me, which made me realize early on that I wasn’t on my preferred trajectory, even though I enjoyed early success. I started my career as a software engineer trainee with Nucleus Software in Noida, India, working my way up to senior software engineer role after two quick promotions. 

During this time, I felt it was time for me to move away from Oracle and SQL and get on to the latest trends in the industry with my hopes set on machine learning and big data.

I realized that essentially all industries would be looking for ways to leverage the tremendous amount of raw data generated every second in order to gain an edge and create efficiencies. My specific interest was in how this data could be used for predictions, classifications, and language processing within the context of AI and machine learning.

Machine learning has changed the way we see data. Now, with the help of easier programming languages like Python, we can create magic with code.

My other passion, also enabled by big data, is robotics process automation (RPA). While the term “robot” may conjure images of industrial machines welding steel automobile chassis together, or perhaps your automated vacuum cleaner robot, RPA has more to do with the automation of administrative work. RPA may automate such processes as IT support, shipping logistics, data migration, or other jobs that reduce the time humans spend on repetitive tasks while reducing errors.

Every magician must learn the tools of their trade, however. I was confident I had the requisite foundation in technology but needed specific skills training to get started.

The Simplilearn Solution: Patience and Planning for the Future

I knew I wanted to learn the core skills that would enable a future career in big data and AI, but I wasn’t sure where to turn at first. I watched numerous free tutorials online but realized I wasn’t getting anything “concrete” that would help me make this transition. Then, one of my relatives suggested that I look into Simplilearn’s offerings, something they have benefited from.

In order to make the big shift I had planned, I decided to take my relative’s advice and enrolled in Simplilearn’s extensive Big Data Engineer Master’s Program. This program combines several key courses on data science that help prepare learners for a wide variety of roles involving data and AI, including instruction in Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB, Data Science with R, and Data Science with SAS. 

While I found the Hadoop ecosystem to be the most interesting part, I truly appreciated the comprehensive nature of the program. I learned the fundamentals of data science and how it could be applied in addition to hands-on training on how to use Python, R, and other tools and processes. 

All these courses actually helped me to see my way through to become a data scientist and was pleased not only with the subject matter but in how it was packaged and presented in a practical, career-ready manner. 

I didn’t go and look for a job the moment I completed the program, instead I took about four months to fully immerse myself in these technologies, while continuing working in my software engineer job. That meant less time for my other personal interests, including cricket and spending time outdoors, but I had come prepared with a singular goal in mind.

To adapt to dynamic career challenges, people are starting to equip themselves with new and upcoming skills. If you wish to stay relevant and up-to-date with the needs of the digital world, constantly learning new skills is the solution. This is my story of how I transitioned from an Industrial engineer to an Analytics Manager.

The Challenge

I worked as an Industrial Engineer for two years at First American India Pvt. Ltd. Since I was always fascinated with data, I changed my domain and got the role of Assistant Manager for Data Analysis and started working in MISD (Multiple Instruction, Single Data).

During my role, I worked primarily with Excel for all data-related work. I was able to work with graphs and pictorial representations, but there was not much else I could do on Excel. One time, the management asked me to show them the top performers or the bottom liners, and with Excel’s limitations, I couldn’t do it. With the amount of data coming in, I felt that there has to be a better way to express data.

When I saw my colleagues in different departments working with different tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Data Studio, and R Studio, I realized that they were getting work done more in-depth. Most importantly, this opened my eyes to a whole new field of data analytics.

Since no one knew how to use Tableau in my division, I decided to learn and introduce it to my team to learn better from data.

I started training myself through online videos and attending live classes. However, they were not as professional and interactive as I had hoped for. The demos were not well organized and the instructors were not trained enough. They lacked interactive and communication skills mostly due to the fact that they were part-timers who were professionals in their own organization. They only focused on basic courses, and not everyone was able to follow their pace. I knew I needed trainers and professionals who had an in-depth knowledge of Tableau.

The Simplilearn Solution

When I googled Tableau courses, Simplilearn was the first result that came up. With anticipation, I looked through a lot of other sites as well and compared all the curriculums. Simplilearn’s curriculum looked far more advanced and structured than all the rest.

I started my course with Simplilearn in October 2018 when I signed up for the course and received a call from one of Simpilearn’s sales executives. The sales executive was easily able to put all my doubts to rest about the course curriculum, the instructors, the amount of interaction I would get with instructors and so on. Even before the course started, I felt that they had good knowledge about how the course would be.

With my past experience, I was very skeptical about the way the instructor would train. However, the batch was a mix of beginners, moderates, and experienced people and the trainer was easily able to handle all the three types of learners. The course was well structured and the quality of training was very good. Some of the highlights from the course were maps, heatmaps, country and state, pictorial representation of maps, tooltip and parameter control.

The one thing that I liked the most about Simplilearn’s training process was the surveys taken after every two days. When the trainer was too fast or too slow for some learners, they were able to raise their concerns and the feedback would be incorporated by the trainer.

This made the training highly interactive as I was easily able to communicate with not just the trainer but with the other learners from all over the world as well.

I hit a roadblock with Simplilearn’s final project for certification. I got in touch with my trainer to get some hep and he was there for the entire duration of my project. I was able to finish the project exceptionally well and got my certification.