Data Science

4 Crucial Soft Skills For Data Science And Machine Learning Practitioners

Effective communication, documentation, presentation, and continuous learning

2 min readFeb 18, 2021

To be an effective data science or machine learning practitioner, it’s essential to have some soft skills, apart from the technical knowledge of libraries, frameworks, and algorithms.

Effective Communication

You’ll talk to stakeholders from different teams to gather requirements & deliverables.
You’ll work with IT & database admins to get data from multiple sources for analysis/ modeling.
You’ll work with software engineers to deploy your pipelines, models & jobs to production.

Projects often fail due to a lack of clear communication.

Documentation & Writing

Document every step of your work using READMEs, Google docs, or spreadsheets
Track experiment results to iterate systematically, avoid failed ideas & combine good ones.
Documentation will help with knowledge transfer to let others take over or build on your work.

Months of work can disappear into oblivion if not appropriately documented.

Engaging Presentation

You’ll present your ideas, insights, and findings to decision-makers from different teams.
It’s vital to present insights visually and present findings in non-technical language.
You’ll need to explain the inner workings of your models in simple terms for it to be accepted.

No matter how great your ideas are, they won’t be accepted if you can’t present them.

Continuous Learning

Keep up with the latest research, tools & techniques in data science & ML to stay relevant.
Learn, use and master proprietary tools when required (Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Mode, etc.)
Cultivate domain knowledge about the company’s business to be more effective at your work.

Try to set aside some time every week for learning and self-improvement.

P.S.: We’re working on a new intensive boot camp that will help you acquire these skills and land your first data science role. If you’re interested in being part of the first batch, please provide your details here: http://bit.ly/jovian-data-analyst-bootcamp