I just heard DJ Patel, the guy who created LinkedIn’s data team talk about creating data science teams.
Besides mentioning Python in passing, he didn’t talk about software skills or statistics competency. Instead, he said being a creative problem solver was the most important pre-requisite. Here are a few more things to look for:
- Passion for data
- History of manipulating data to solve problems
- Ability to clean data
- Ability to find and meld multiple data sets
- Skills to visualize data
Interestingly, he didn’t focus on communications skills, which is something I’ve heard people talk about.