[dtjones]

I've been working in data roles for 10 years and hold a masters in ML. I've hired and managed each of the roles you mentioned. I think of the responsibilities of each of those roles as:

-ML Engineers as building software infrastructure to scale machine learning inference and training.

-Data engineers focusing on data infrastructure and pipelining into either model inference, training, or other business intelligence platforms

-Analysts consume the product of the data engineer in the BI platform or excel, where the results would be consumed as a report in some form.

-And ML Researchers would be those inventing novel machine learning algorithms to deploy in the ML Infrastructure managed by the ML Engineers

-And data scientists to deploy well-known ML algorithms or statistical inference on varying datasets on the ML Infrascturue or as a slide deck.

[beckingz]

How hard could it be to find one person who can do all that?

[aeyes]

Depends on the amount of data, reports, pipelines... If the company is small you might not have any of these problems. Every Mom&Pop store has some sort of data to run the business but they don't need a "data" person.

Once you have 10s of datastores + pipelines, 100s of reports and a "data lake" in the TBs you'll likely be needing specialized people.

[stuxnet79]

So far I've spent my career in small teams / startups and it's starting to become apparent that a lot of what's assumed in these titles only applies in larger corporations where resources are abundant and it makes business sense to have a specialist focused on a single aspect.

Unfortunately I'm at a point where I have 'jack of all trades master of none' syndrome and it's causing me to fall in between the cracks professionally. I'd like to move to a larger company where I can develop deep expertise in a narrow topic.

[proverbialbunny]

ymmv, but as a data scientist at young startups, I often am the one giving new tasks to the software engineers, and facilitate teaching and training if they need help.

Most of those roles a software engineer can do.

[stuxnet79]

Thanks for the breakdown!