Today, big data has become a critical part of businesses of all shapes and sizes. Far more than simply helpful, it’s used to provide companies and organizations with actionable insights to better inform their strategies and decisions.
Big data has grown exponentially as of late, and its rise is affecting practically every part of businesses and their operations. In order to leverage the power of this important tool, companies need software developers who specialize in building platforms to gather, clean, analyze, and use this information effectively.
What responsibilities does this role cover? And what should you look for in a big data developer? Here’s what you should know about hiring a big data developer.
Big Data Developers Hiring Guide
With so much data being generated every day, how can companies use it actionably? This is where the big data developer comes in. These professionals conceptualize, research, and build platforms for gathering, storing, analyzing, and presenting information in a digestible way.
Big data developers are responsible for governing a business’ entire data infrastructure, creating tools, and gleaning insights efficiently.
Apache Hadoop, a platform that manages data for applications and serves as a collection of tools, plays a huge part in the developer’s role, along with several other frameworks and tools. The developer will generally be tasked with creating Hadoop applications to solve problems within the organization.
Additionally, big data developers monitor and test the software solutions they build and improve.
What should you look for in a big data developer?
Big data developers should have technological and software skills, along with business acumen. They will need to know a variety of programming languages, particularly database languages. Of course, knowledge of and experience working with Hadoop is a must, too.
Along with technical skills, big data developers should have strong soft skills — analytical, problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, interpersonal, and more — in order to work with others and succeed in their roles.
Interview Questions
Explain Hadoop in a nutshell
Apache Hadoop is an open-source library that aids big data developers in processing, storing, exploring, and analyzing large, complex, unstructured data sets. With the assistance of this framework, developers can build software for distributed computing and gain insights from the data. While there are plenty of other tools that help big data developers, Hadoop is considered a foundational one. Bear in mind that the library isn’t one entity but an entire ecosystem, offering a collection of tools to facilitate more reliable development of scalable solutions.
What are the 5 Vs of big data?
Volume: Amount of data that is collected and growing.
Velocity: Speed of data growth. A high rate of velocity is critical for making informed business decisions.
Variety: Different types, media, and formats of data.
Veracity: How accurate is the data? Veracity refers to the usability and/or uncertainty involved in the data you have.
Value: How you can utilize the data for business decisions.
Why is big data important?
Quite frankly, big data is fundamental to businesses of practically every type. When you have the tools and means to collect and leverage it, you will be equipped to measure results from every aspect of your business, inform your decisions, and transform your operations. You can draw insights to devise concrete strategies and improve your business based on facts, rather than conjecture.
What’s the relationship between big data and data science?
Data science involves all things data. It’s a broad term encompassing activities like analyzing data, identifying patterns, gleaning insights, interpreting information, processing data, and forecasting trends. Although the 2 terms are by no means synonymous, data science involves big data — it’s the discipline and, essentially, the study of big data. In other words, these 2 ideas depend on one another. That said, data science is a broad term that refers to a wide range of activities, tools, and techniques that concern using this data.
Job Description
We are looking for a talented big data developer to create technologies and platforms for collecting, storing, leveraging, and processing large amounts of data, toward the goal of giving the business actionable insights to use. The developer will also integrate the systems they build into the overall company architecture.
Responsibilities
- Design and build scalable big data programs and applications
- Monitor new and existing programs for accuracy and efficiency
- Ensure products align with and support company goals
- Test applications
- Ensure security and privacy for all programs
- Utilize tools like Hadoop
- Serve as the lead for big data projects
- Educate other employees on how to use technologies
- Research requirements and propose new solutions
- Create best practices and documentation
Skills and Qualifications
- Knowledge of Hadoop, Spark, SQL, and NoSQL technologies
- Ability to use MapReduce
- Ability to leverage data mining tools and data visualization tools
- Knowledge of Java, SQL, JavaScript, Node.js, OOAD, Python, Kafka, and R
- Knowledge of data querying tools
- Problem-solving, critical thinking, interpersonal, and analytical skills
- Strong skills in back-end programming
- Business knowledge and acumen
- Knowledge of machine learning algorithms
- Knowledge of data warehousing
- Proven ability to write quality code
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field
