The data science and engineering market is thriving right now, as companies are constantly finding new ways to use the data they generate. The market has seen tremendous growth in the past few years, with researchers projecting its market value to grow five times in size by 2027.
As organizations look to build out their data and AI roadmaps, they’re continuing to hire data experts specialized in different domains. Data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and MLOps engineers combine to form the data engines that help these companies excel. And at bootcamps like WeCloudData, you can learn how to fill all of these roles effectively, and unlock a lifelong career in a well-funded field.
Who Is WeCloudData?
WeCloudData is an accredited educational institution based in Toronto, Canada that serves students from around the world. Data experts like Shaohua Zhang, who led the data science team at Blackberry and heads up data consultancy company Beamdata, co-founded the organization in 2015 to pioneer a new method of teaching data science.
These experts decided to start a new bootcamp that would address the gap they felt between academia, industry, and the challenges of regular bootcamps.
Instead of giving students a classroom education where they learned the tools of the trade in a vacuum, students would learn by working on real-life company projects. They’d be able to work on projects that solve real challenges for Fortune 500 companies alongside real data experts to learn from their workflow. And, of course, they’d also learn industry-standard tools including Python, SQL, Machine Learning, AWS, and Spark before they progressed to that stage.
WeCloudData adds an extra layer of appeal due to its accreditation. Its private career college, the Toronto Institute for Data Science and Technology, is accredited by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities. This puts this school in a unique position to offer diplomas for Canadian students who complete its various programs.
But there’s a lot more that makes this school unique.
What’s It Like to Learn at WeCloudData?
WeCloudData offers unique benefits that make it a strong option for data, AI, and DevOps education. The school’s personalized education approach, real client projects, deep webinar offerings, and career mentorship programs ensure that students receive an upper echelon learning experience.
Personalized Education
This school prides itself on its four-to-one instructor-to-student ratio. Students get closer attention with smaller class sizes, where instructors can focus on meeting each student’s unique needs instead of giving each class the same experience.
Students learn from WeCloudData’s proprietary learning portal, the Learning Management System (LMS). In the learning platform, instructors can perform real-time coding reviews, administer live quizzes, and give students live coding tests and mock interview tests. Students can get feedback on their work and progression towards a new career whenever they want it, which gives them more chances to grow.
WeCloudData’s courses also come with one-on-one career support, where students actively work with a career mentor throughout their time in the program, and for up to two years after graduation in the data science, data engineering, and data analytics programs. These mentors prime students for their new job hunt with insider guidance for the data, AI, and DevOps fields.
If students need a little extra support after hours, they always have options. TAs hold office hours every night where students can ask questions and receive strong support. Industry experts also hold guest lectures every week, which give students a chance to peek behind the curtain of different industries.
Real Client Projects
Students in the immersive programs also get the chance to form their own impressions on their new careers. After students have laid a foundation in the data program of their choice, they’ll start to take on real client projects around the halfway point of their time in the course.
As many WeCloudData students have little to no experience in data before joining the program, these projects give them an opportunity to gain some important job experience. They not only get to test out their hard skills in coding, modeling, and more, but they also build up their soft skills.
Students learn how to communicate with business stakeholders who may not have a tech background. They learn how to translate a business’s real problems into data and AI problems that they can help solve. They learn to explain the value of work which may be slow with showing results. They also learn how to communicate the data’s story so their coworkers can use their findings properly.
And much like every other step in the WeCloudData experience, students won’t do it alone. The school assigns project managers to each project to help oversee their progress and make sure the communication keeps going between students and their clients. This way, students can learn the nuances of the job with support from someone they can trust.
To fully prepare the students for client projects, WeCloudData’s project managers also provide a week-long intensive agile project management training. During this training, students learn important tools like Jira and Confluence and practice working in the agile system in group assignments.
Webinars
The free webinars and networking events at WeCloudData cover a variety of useful subjects and provide opportunities where students can make important connections. There are over 18,000 members in the worldwide community and they vary from companies looking for new employees, to individuals who organize more specialized events.
Employers in several different industries organize hiring events at WeCloudData and also hold events where they explain standard use cases to attendees. Data experts give presentations on the job market and also how to prepare for a career switch into data for people who’ve never worked in the industry.
These webinars are a great source of information and also provide opportunities for attendees to meet job recruiters and network with established data professionals. And with the quality education at WeCloudData, you’ll be ready to join their ranks in as little as two to six months.
Career Services
As mentioned above, the data market is growing exponentially over the next few years, and WeCloudData gives students every opportunity to claim their spot in the data revolution.
WeCloudData’s career support pairs students with their own personal career counselor who helps them reach their true potential as job hunters. These counselors don’t just meet with students for a few sessions towards the end of the course, they stick with students until they’ve landed their first data job.
These career counselors provide support on resume building, assembling a portfolio, preparing for job interviews, salary negotiations, and more. Students also get their own personalized headshots to look their best for new job offers, in addition to access to the school’s hiring network and career-boosting webinars.
These resources are available in every career track, so students in any data science branch can take advantage of these great opportunities.
WeCloudData’s Programs
There are four programs we’ll be discussing from WeCloudData: data analytics, data science, data engineering, and AI engineering. Each course is designed to prepare students for a different role in a data team.
These courses have something to offer for people at any stage of their data careers. Newcomers can learn the full skill set for each field, but modules from each program are also available individually for upskillers who may want to learn a specific tool to advance their careers.
Data Science Program
Data scientists help predict future performance for an organization. They perform their duties by building algorithms and models that can quickly interpret a company’s past data and output projections about what’s coming next.
In WeCloudData’s Data Science and Big Data program, students can learn the intricacies of data science in a full-time immersive format or a part-time format. This course builds students into master data scientists from the ground up, teaching them the same coding skills from the data analytics course along with training in statistics, machine learning, and big data.
But beyond the hard training, students learn how to solve problems on their own instead of memorizing the order of operations. They learn how to fail successfully by learning from efforts that didn’t work and how they can add value to a program. Then they build up their job-hunting materials and data portfolios while gaining access to the WeCloudData hiring network.
As we mentioned above, this course gives students an accredited diploma upon completion that holds the same weight as those from traditional higher learning institutions. The difference here is that you’ll pay less total to learn the same tools, and spend less time in school while earning on-the-job experience so that you can start finding a job as soon as possible.
The full-time program is available in-person or online, lasts for six months, and costs $15,400 CAD ($12,714.39 USD). The next courses start on September 20 and January 24.
Data Engineering Program
Data engineering is the most technical wing of data science. Data engineers build pipelines that automatically sort the massive lakes of data that companies generate every second. Every byte of data has to go to the most useful destination for the rest of the data department, and so this job requires painstaking attention to detail and world-class coding skills.
In WeCloudData’s Applied Data Engineering and Architecture program, students learn how to wrangle big data on the biggest platforms like AWS, GCP, Spark, Kubernetes, and more. They learn how to build data pipelines and get hands-on experience working with data warehouse, data modeling, data ingestion, and more. Students in this course also learn the critical thinking and professional skills they need for long careers.
The course comes in both full-time and part-time structures to serve the needs of newcomers and working data professionals. Students in the full-time course get the chance to participate in the real-world experience portion of the course as well. This step allows them to get critical on-the-job experience to prepare them for the challenges they’ll face after graduation.
The part-time online course costs $8,000 CAD ($6,604.88 USD) and the full-time online course costs $12,000 CAD ($9,907.32 USD). Both courses last for 24 weeks. At the end of the course, students gain a certificate that shows they can build pipelines that can serve the biggest organizations around the world. The next course starts on August 4.
AI Engineering Program
WeCloudData’s new AI Engineering program is launching this fall. This course is for data scientists and analytics professionals who want to take their data skills to the next level. Many of WeCloudData’s hiring partners are closely watching this program’s launch because of the opportunity to bring highly qualified AI and MLOps experts to their organizations.
This program is for students who already have data science, analytics, and machine learning knowledge. Students in this course will learn practical deep learning and machine learning engineering skills. These students will learn how to deploy AI models in production, starting from feature engineering, model training/tuning, and model packaging and monitoring before moving to model deployment.
Data Analytics Program
Data analytics is the practice of looking at data from a business’s past and forming conclusions about its performance. Though this job is less intensive than the other two we’ll soon discuss, it’s by no means easy. You’ll still need to learn how to properly access databases, scrape data, and visualize your findings in ways that non-experts can understand.
The online Applied Business Intelligence and Data Analytics course teaches students the tools they’ll be using throughout their data science careers. Over eight weeks, students learn how to use Microsoft Excel, Python, Excel, PowerBI Tableau, and more across a number of different business disciplines with seven industry use cases before tackling a capstone project. They’ll also learn how to manage relationships with customers on a personal and technical level.
Throughout the process, students can attend 40 hours of TA-supported Ask Me Anything sessions. These sessions allow students to ask deeper questions on their assignments, quizzes, portfolios, and certifications as they progress through the program.
This part-time course costs $5,600 CAD ($4,623.42 USD), and it rewards students a certificate upon graduation. This certificate demonstrates that graduates have mastered the data analytics tools they need to succeed in the workplace and that they have a firm working knowledge of the field. From there, students can choose to get a job, or progress to the data science course.
The next courses start on July 5 and October 4.
Part-Time Specialized Courses
Each module of each program is available for students who may only want to learn a single aspect of the field. Some of these courses include basic training in SQL and Python, applied deep learning, machine learning in healthcare, coding for data engineers, AWS certification workshops, and more.
These courses range in length, but they tend to last a few weeks each. They also range in price from anywhere from $360 CAD to $2,000 CAD ($297.59 to $1,653.30 USD). With each course, you’ll be able to pay in multiple different ways.
How to Pay for WeCloudData’s Programs
There are a few payment options for the programs at WeCloudData. The school offers one option directly, but there are a few more special options that are available through the school’s partners. Ontario-based students can attend the program without paying taxes, and even deduct the cost of their education from their tax obligations.
Upfront Payment
Students can pay the complete cost of their program in one upfront lump sum. This is the fastest way to get all of your payment obligations out of the way so you can focus on learning. But if you’re unable to make the full payment upfront, you have strong alternative options.
Interest-Free Installments
WeCloudData also offers an interest-free installment plan. Students can space out their financial obligation into three installments. Students pay these installments before the middle of the program to cover the cost of their courses, and then their payment obligations are satisfied. The bootcamp also offers an installment plan through its partnership with Paybright. This plan, however, does charge interest on its installments.
Private Loan
Paybright is a private loan provider that allows students to make monthly payments on their education. Students can even choose an option where they only pay the loan’s interest upfront and then start paying the principal after a few years.
Government Funding
WeCloudData has access to a unique funding option due to its accredited status. Students from Ontario may be eligible for up to $28,000 CAD in funding from the province’s Second Career program. If you were laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this funding for tuition, transportation, childcare, and other basic living expenses will help ease the transition to a new chapter in your life.
Conclusion
With great programs and the ability to grant diplomas, WeCloudData provides a career-first approach to data science education. This accredited institution will stand out on resumes worldwide as an educator with verified legitimacy.
They offer plenty of programs to serve your needs no matter where you are in your data science journey. And with plenty of financing options and benefits for local students, this school offers a multitude of rewards without the time and financial cost of a traditional higher education institution.
If you’re interested in learning more about the WeCloudData experience, feel free to attend some of the school’s free introductory webinars online.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
