Someone asked this on Quora about how to learn & explore the field of Big Data Algorithms? Also, mentioned having some background in python already and wanted ideas to work on a good project so with that context, here is my reply:
There are two broad roles available in Data/Big-Data world:
- Engineering-oriented: Date engineers, Data Warehousing specialists, Big Data engineer, Business Intelligence engineer— all of these roles are focused on building that data pipeline using code/tools to get the data in some centralized location
- Business-oriented: Data Analyst, Data scientist — all of these roles involve using data (from those centralized sources) and helping business leaders make better decisions. *
*smaller companies (or startups) tend to have roles where small teams(or just one person) do it all so the distinction is not that apparent.
Now given your background in python and programming, you might be a great fit for “Data engineer” roles and I would recommend learning about Apache spark (since you can use python code) and start building data pipelines. As you work with a little bit more than you can learn about how to build and deploy end-to-end machine learning projects with python & Apache spark. If you acquire these skills and keep learning — then I am sure you will end up with a good project.
Hope that helped and good luck!