RAYBEAM/DEPT® Data Analysts: Across the Stack

RAYBEAM/DEPT® employs engineers, project managers, data scientists, and ✨analysts✨ (guess which one I am?). When thinking of a data analyst, you might imagine the colleague who’s a pivot table whiz and makes the same dashboards and slide presentations for the execs every month (yes, I’m having flashbacks to my first job). Thankfully data analysis has progressed and encompasses far more than Excel.

As a data-centric consulting firm, we work through the entire lifecycle of data for our clients. From API pulls of billions of rows of raw data to snappy statistics proudly shared with customers, we are involved in every step. Our analysts tend to break into two groups: analysts who work in the first half of the lifecycle, and those who work in the second half.

Pilfering Borrowing terms from my software developer colleagues, I call these first half of the lifecycle analysts “back-end data analysts,” and these second half of the lifecycle analysts “front-end data analysts.” Although their skills overlap, their daily work, expertise, and close colleagues differ. See the table below for the major comparisons between the two. 

There are opportunities to be both kinds of analyst at RAYBEAM/DEPT®–dare I call them full-stack data analysts–or specialize in one. Unsurprisingly, their roles are deeply dependent on one another, and they cannot function completely solo. 

Data analysis is a rich topic with a complex lifecycle, and we spend a lot of time at RAYBEAM/DEPT® thinking about it. We continually work with the latest, best tech stacks to implement thoughtful data models and visualizations for our clients.

For further reading on data analysts at RAYBEAM/DEPT®, check out What does a Data Analyst do?.