50,000 AI & Data Science Jobs Are Vacant In India, As Candidates Don't Have The Required Skills

India is among other countries on the forefront of AI development. At least, that's what experts in the field claim.

But according to a recent report, we don't seem to be doing so well at filling the jobs, created by this AI development, with early talent.

In a recent report by business analytics firm Great Learning, India has more than 50,000 jobs in both data science and machine learning lying vacant. Apparently, that's because we just don't have enough talent to fill them

Apparently, there are twice as many jobs available in these two professions as there are job seekers. Great Learning, in exclusive insight shared with Economic Times, says this is a clear indication that Indian professionals need to upskill.

What's going wrong?

"India lacks massively when it comes to talent in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence," said Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of Great Learning. "With more and more jobs increasingly becoming data-driven, the need of the hour is for professionals to upskill themselves to stay relevant."

According to Nair, the reason many AI jobs can't find talent to fill shoes is because companies want to implement projects with a much higher standard of data skills required. Unfortunately, people that possess those kind of skills are few, because it's the sort of education they had.

Also Read: The World Needs Millions Of Qualified AI Engineers, But There Are Only 3 Lakh Of Them Right Now

"What people learn in colleges is not in sync with what is being used in industry," he said. "Most of these individuals passed out a while back. Now a lot of things are getting automated; newer opportunities are coming up. That is where there is a dearth of talent."

According to the research firm, banking and financial services is the biggest market for analytics and data science professionals, having created 44 percent these jobs last year. Ecommerce came in a distant second, creating 12 percent of data analytics jobs last year. Healthcare (12 percent), energy and utilities (8 percent), telecom (6 percent), media (6 percent) all contributed to creating data science jobs as well.

The study also quotes Gartner, which claims that 75 percent of the 10 lakh registered in companies in India are investing, or have already invested, in machine learning and data science.

What do companies want?

The report indicates that most job postings in this field are looking for candidates with knowledge of SQL programming, but Python is also the fastest-growing thanks to its easy compatibility with machine learning libraries.

For the most part, companies are looking to hire data scientists and analysts, machine learning engineers, technical architects, data engineers, and other similar talented professionals. They're willing to pay for them too, with the salary jump for these roles including an average of a 45 percent hike. And because of the dearth of skill, they can climb even higher.

"New tech will continually evolve at a breakneck pace. Professionals need to upskill themselves, innovate and do newer things. Every four to five years, your competencies will have to change," Nair said.