'Data scientists are very scarce,' says Red Hat CIO

Fierce competition for a limited number of good candidates makes hiring hard, Lee Congdon tells Computing

It's difficult to hire good data scientists as the right candidates are "very scarce" because universities and colleges have failed to adapt to meet the needs of the enterprise.

That's according to Lee Congdon, CIO of open source software provider Red Hat, who is attempting to shift the Raleigh, North Carolina-based firm towards a more "data driven" business model.

"Our approach has shifted from creating what we hoped to be a pristine data warehouse and then providing access to it through reporting tools, to capturing more and more data and giving it our users," Congdon told Computing.

However, Congdon said recruiting people with the right data science skills is hard, even for an organisation like his.

"It's difficult to find data scientists; we think we've got some good ones, but we've developed them internally," he said.

"We started with people with the right BI background, the right analytical skills. Certainly we bring in people from outside the organisation as well and partner with firms who have the capability; SAS, for example," Congdon said.

"From a standpoint of acquiring the skills, I think it's a very scarce skill right now."

Congdon's worries echo those of Dunnhumby CIO Yael Cossett, who talked to Computing in October about his concerns about the data science skills gap.

Congdon said the education system in the US has been slow to respond to rapid increase in demand from business for data science skills.

"As we shift to an information-driven economy, the need for every firm - regardless of what product or service they sell - to have data analysis capabilities is growing," he explained.

"The education system hasn't responded yet; folks haven't chosen this as a career path and have instead started to develop the skillsets themselves after they've joined an organisation."

Here in the UK, the Conservative-led coalition government has attempted to address the data science skills gap by investing £42m into the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science.

Computing's full interview with Red Hat Chief Information Officer Lee Congdon will be published in the near future.