How to Become a Big Data Hadoop Architect - Learning Paths Explored

What Does a Big Data Hadoop Architect Do?

Big Data Hadoop architects have evolved to become vital links between businesses and technology. They’re responsible for planning and designing next-generation big-data systems and managing large-scale development and deployment of Hadoop applications. Hadoop architects are among the highest-paid professionals in the IT industry, earning on average between $91,392 and $133,988 per year, and as much as $200,000 per year. 

If you want to pursue a career in this role, you’ll need to understand the needs of IT organizations, how Big Data specialists and engineers operate, and how to serve as a link between these two critical entities.

Any organization that wants to build a Big Data environment will require a Big Data Architect who can manage the complete lifecycle of a Hadoop solution – including requirement analysis, platform selection, design of technical architecture, design of application design and development, testing, and deployment of the proposed solution.

Ensure You Meet These Primary Requirements

To be a Big Data Hadoop architect, you must have advanced data mining and data analysis skills, which require years of professional experience in the Big Data field. If you have the skills listed here, you’re on the right track:

• Marketing and analytical skills: the ability to process and analyze data to understand the behavior of the buyer/customer.
• RDBMSs (Relational Database Management Systems) or foundational database skills
• The ability to implement and use NoSQL, Cloud Computing, and MapReduce
• Skills in statistics and applied math
• Data visualization and data migration

Moreover, your influence as a data architect will continue to grow, as many businesses are now turning to data architects (more than data analysts or database engineers) to integrate and apply data from different sources. As a data architect, you will play an essential role in working closely with users, system designers, and developers.

What's All This Fuss about Hadoop, Anyway?

Datamation has this to say about Hadoop: “When it comes to tools for working with Big Data, open-source solutions in general and Apache Hadoop, in particular, dominate the landscape.” Forrester Analyst Mike Gualtieri recently predicted that "100 percent of large companies" would adopt Hadoop over the next couple of years.

A report from Market Research forecasts that the Hadoop market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 58 percent through 2022 and that it will be worth more than $1 billion by 2020. IBM, too, believes so strongly in open source Big Data tools that it assigned 3,500 researchers to work on Apache Spark, a tool that is part of the Hadoop ecosystem.

Apache’s Hadoop has become synonymous with Big Data because its ecosystem includes various open-source tools that help in “highly scalable and distributed computing.”

How Do I Get There?

In a field as technical and ultra-competitive as Big Data and Hadoop, you are acquiring an accredited, globally-recognized professional certification may be the best way to not only learn the ins and outs of the domain but to also back it up with authoritative validation.

Simplilearn's Big Data Courses gives you all the knowledge and the skills that will be required to speed up your career as a Big Data Architect. The program has been designed to meet the high-in-demand requirements of Big Data Architects in the field. This program provides access to 200+ hours of high-quality eLearning, on-demand support by Hadoop experts, simulation exams, a community moderated by experts, and a Master's certificate upon completion of the training.

The infographic at the top of this article lays out a series of learning paths to guide you in your journey.

What Do The Various Certifications Mean?

1. Big Data and Hadoop Developer

The best way to begin is by taking the Big Data and Hadoop Developer certification course. This course is aimed at enabling professionals to engage in assignments in Big Data. Beyond covering the concepts of Hadoop 2.7, the course provides hands-on training in Big Data and Hadoop and involves candidates in projects that require the implementation of Big Data and Hadoop concepts.

Once you finish this course, you will have a thorough knowledge of MapReduce, HDFS, Pig, Hive, Hbase, Zookeeper, Flume, and Sqoop.

Software developers and architects, analytics professionals, data management professionals, business intelligence professionals, project managers, aspiring data scientists, and anyone with a keen interest in Big Data Analytics – including graduates – can benefit significantly from this course.

2. Apache Spark and Scala

What comes next? Apache Spark and Scala. This course is aimed at equipping aspirants with skills involved in the real-time processing of Hadoop.

Apache Spark is an open-source cluster computing framework that supports data “transformation” and “mapping” concepts. This framework works well with Scala (or “Scalable Language,”), which is a preferred workhorse language for server systems that are mission-critical.

Once you're done with this Apache Spark and Scala course, you can choose either of the two NoSQL databases – MongoDB or Cassandra.

• MongoDB: MongoDB is a cross-platform document-oriented database that supports data modeling, ingestion, query and sharing, data replication, and more. It is the most popular NoSQL database in the industry.

A certification course in MongoDB will build your expertise in writing Java and Node JS applications using MongoDB; improve your skills in replication and sharing of data so you can optimize read/write performance; teach you installation, configuration, and maintenance of a MongoDB environment; and develop your proficiency in MongoDB configuration, backup methods, and monitoring and operational strategies. 
 
It will also give you experience in creating and managing different types of indexes in MongoDB for query execution, and offer you a deeper understanding of managing DB Notes, replica set, and Master-Slave concepts.
 
To sum it up, you will be able to process huge amounts of data using MongoDB tools and proficiently store unstructured data in MongoDB.

• Cassandra: Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed database management system that works on the “master-and-slave” mechanism. Cassandra works best with write-heavy applications.

Cassandra offers greater scalability and is thus able to store petabytes of data. It is carefully designed to handle huge workloads across multiple data centers without a single point of failure.
 
A certification course in Apache Cassandra will include details on the fundamentals of Big Data and NoSQL databases; Cassandra and its features; the architecture and data model of Cassandra; installation, configuration, and monitoring of Cassandra; and the Hadoop ecosystem of products around Cassandra.

3. Apache Storm

Apache Storm is designed for real-time event processing with Big Data. To implement Apache Storm effectively, you need to master the fundamental concepts of Apache Storm as well as its architecture. An understanding of plan installation and configuration with Apache Storm is also necessary.

This course will give you a thorough understanding of ingesting and processing real-time events with Storm, and the fundamentals of Trident extensions to Apache Storm. You’ll learn about grouping and data insertion in Apache Storm and develop an understanding of the fundamentals of Storm interfaces with Kafka, Cassandra, and Java.

4. Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source Apache project, highlighted by the fact that it’s a high-performance real-time messaging system that can process millions of messages per second. It provides a distributed and partitioned messaging system and is highly fault-tolerant.

Before you begin, you’ve got to have a good grasp of Kafka architecture, installation, interfaces, and configuration.

With more companies around the world adapting to Kafka, it has become the preferred messaging platform for processing Big Data in real-time. With this certification, you will become a master at handling huge amounts of data.

5. Impala

This is the last in the line of certifications that will lead you to become a Big Data Hadoop architect. Knowledge of Impala – ‘an Open Source SQL Engine for Hadoop’ – will equip you with an understanding of the basic concepts of Massively Parallel Processing (MPP), the SQL query engine that runs on Apache Hadoop. With this certification, you will be able to interpret the role of Impala in the Big Data Ecosystem.

Impala provides advantages in its ability to query data in Apache Hadoop and skip the time-consuming steps of loading and recognizing data. You will also be able to gain knowledge of databases, SQL, data warehouse, and other database programming languages.

Conclusion

Following this path will enable you to reach your destination as a data expert. On your way, you will develop a comprehensive understanding of the overall IT landscape and its multitude of technologies, and above all, you will be able to analyze how different technologies work together. There is a lot to absorb on your way, but patience and hard work will reward you with the data architect job of tomorrow.

If you're interested in becoming a Big Data expert then we have just the right course for you. Join our Caltech Post Graduate Program in Data Science course and start your big data journey today!

Also have a look at our Big Data Career Guide which will give you insights into the most trending technologies, the top companies that are hiring, the skills required to jumpstart your career in the thriving field of Big Data, and offers you a personalized roadmap to becoming a successful Big Data expert.