Can a Civil Engineer Become a Data Scientist?

Learn how civil engineers can leverage their experience in civil engineering to become successful data scientists.

Can a Civil Engineer Become a Data Scientist?

Data science is an interdisciplinary field that combines mathematics, statistics, coding skills, business analysis, and an understanding of how companies work. It is possible for anyone to enter the domain of data science, regardless of their domain or discipline. What matters in the industry is the experience and knowledge of the domain, along with the projects and exercises. To become a data scientist, you need to have several years of experience solving industry problems through decoding patterns of large data sets. Civil engineers have good mathematical and statistical skills that are essential for data science in the construction industry.

With the help of modern data science tools and techniques, civil engineers can easily plan, identify, classify, analyze, monitor and respond to problems that arise during the construction process. Predictions made by civil engineers have proven to be beneficial in transforming data science in civil engineering and the construction industry. I recently made a career change from Civil Engineering to Data Science. I took a computer science class to complete my engineering degree, but it was my least favorite undergraduate class. After working as a data analyst at Slalom for 3 months, I decided to take a data science course offered by Intellipaat.

My friend who studied Chemical Engineering and is now a Data Scientist at Nestlé Canada also participated in the bootcamp organized by WeCouldData and recommended the same course to me. Over the past few weeks, I focused on big data and cloud computing which are popular buzzwords that all companies are trying to adopt. I also looked into data engineer jobs that fall into this category. After working as an engineer for about a year, I began to wonder if that was the career path I wanted to take. Since I started working as a data scientist, I have received inquiries from fellow civil and environmental engineers about how I made the change. I believe that the only way I could get a job as a data scientist was by leveraging my experience in civil engineering.

Civil engineers can exploit data science to make use of massive amounts of data acquired through advanced technical computer systems. With this knowledge, they can improve project performance with artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. Yes, anyone can become a data scientist regardless of their domain or discipline. Civil engineers already have good mathematical and statistical skills which is the most important aspect of data science. To do all of this, I suggest you check out Intellipaat's Data Science training course and see how our experts provide data science tutorials from our experts.