I’m a L5 Business Analyst at Amazon. Should I focus on moving up to a L6 Business Analyst or to L5 Data Scientist? Would it become tougher to move to Data Science steam after moving to a L6 level as Business Analyst? TC - 130k Yoe - 7 yrs.
Honestly DS is a much higher benchmark than a L6 BA. If you have the skillsets always move towards the engineering route unless you want to be a people manager then stick to the L6 route.
You should check out the job level guidelines on inside. The analytical roles go from Business Analyst > Business Intelligence Engineer > Data Scientist > Research Scientist (and also increasing salary). While a move from BA to Data Scientist isn't impossible, it's a big skills gap and a move into a technical job family, which will require a panel review. Can you provide some short summaries about the projects you've done that you think demonstrate L6 and/or Data Scientist skills, and perhaps some analytics folks can provide feedback.
To add to what the person above said, the gap becomes bigger at higher level. So without discussing the details my advice is to change role then work on leveling up.
I am a L5 BA too, move to DS while you can, don’t wait for L6
My suggestion is move up, if you are business analyst for 6 years, you probably dont have a phd or at least not in stats or computer science. Industry is biased towards “phd” for data scientist roles ( some might say no but its the bitter truth ). You can become a good people manager/ really good BA and still make equal / more money down the line.
Wondering if 130k is just your base salary? Else it’s too low.
It's probably TC sounds about right for an L5 Amazon BA.