Updated May 31, 2023
Introduction to Career in SAS
SAS stands for “Statistical Analysis System,” developed in the 1970s. It is used to analyze large volumes of data. It is a highly flexible and integrated software environment that is used to access, manipulate, manage, research, and use to generate the report of data. It has multiple components:
- BASE SAS: Used to analyze the enormous volume of data, mainly used to solve 70-80% of analytics solutions.
- SAS graph: Use to generate the visualization of data
- SAS Enterprise Miner: Use for data mining purposes
- SAS BI: Used to create the reports
- Advanced SAS: It helps in working with SQL and Macros.
- SAS Data Integration: Use for ETL process and store the data in the dataset or tables.
Apart from the above-listed activities, it helps us in building the modeling of predictive modeling, decision trees, etc.
Education of Career in SAS
As such, there is no proper qualification required to work on SAS, but it would be beneficial if you are from Economics, Statistics, or Engineering Background because whatever the algorithm and component it has in the core, it will come under above mention three sections for example if you want to get specialized in base SAS you must know primary programming language and structure queried language. There are multiple courses offered in the market in which you can opt to specialize in any of the components of SAS. For example, Data Science with SAS is one of the emerging areas in the IT sector through which we can become Data Scientists. Many Business schools like IIM and ISB offer a 1-year degree program through which we can get specialized in SAS. Apart from Indian Business schools, foreign universities also offer courses through which we can specialize in SAS.
Career Path in SAS
As we can have different subsections of SAS, we can choose any of them and build our career into it. SAS starts from the Data level and ends with have reported; from start to end, we can achieve anything through SAS. SAS is not just a single tool or software; it has multiple components since it has been available in the market for 40 years, and it has been upgrading its part over some time. There is a vast scope of SAS in Banking, Insurance, and other financial service company because.
- They have been using SAS for ages and have a system built around SAS.
- SAS is after other open-source tools like R and Python, Python is significant from a data security point of view.
- SAS can put your analytics into production in banking and financial systems; R doesn’t have this.
- Due to its robustness power, it can solve analytics issues as well.
There are a lot of jobs offered to SAS certified professional over an experienced resource, even if a company are willing to have certified professional (like Base SAS licensed or Advance SAS insured) even though they are freshers.
Job Position or Application Area
Multiple jobs are offered to SAS professionals, especially on the analytics side; look at the table below and see what career in SAS you have.
Component Role Area
Base SAS SAS Developer, Data Analyst, Programmer Analyst IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
SAS Graph Designer and Architect IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
SAS Enterprise Miner Business Analyst, Data Miner IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
SAS BI Business Analyst, Software Engineer IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
Advance SAS Senior SAS Developer, Analyst IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
SAS DI Data Analyst, Architect IT, Banking, Pharmacy, Insurance
Right now in the market, there is a massive requirement for data scientists; if you are a certified Data Science professional and have a Career in SAS, you will get an intelligent package as per your role wise. Apart from the above, there are other areas where we can see a career in SAS to get the opportunity like marketing research, Aerospace solution, E-commerce, Sports, and so on.
Salary
Three factors have a direct impact on your salary, first, your work experience; second, your certification; and third, which component you have exposure to. As compared to all 6 members of SAS, BASE SAS developers, Advance SAS developers, and DI professionals get less paid as compared to others; the below figure will give you more idea about packages.
| Component | Experience | Salary |
| Base SAS | 0-5 | 40,000-50000$ |
| SAS Graph | 0-5 | 60,000-70000$ |
| SAS Enterprise Miner | 0-5 | 70,000-90,000$ |
| SAS BI | 0-5 | 90,000-110,000$ |
| Advance SAS | 0-5 | 45,000-65,000$ |
| SAS DI | 0-5 | 50,000-60,000$ |
| Data Scientists | 0-5 | 110,000-150,000$ |
Anyway, these data are rough figures it may also vary from your level of knowledge and your past work experience.
Career Outlook
SAS has some sort of Pros as well as cons since it is a licensed version tool that will provide you with data security, but it will definitely cost on your budget as well. There are a lot many tools comes in the market which can challenge SAS, like Hadoop for Big Data Analytics, R, and Python, which can be used to analyze the data and will provide better visualization of data and be easy to work on it. But SAS is present in the market over the long period, it would be hard for an organization to replace the entire core system, so we can say that in the next 8-10 years, SAS will be there in the market, and you will get a job easily in this field if you have required skills set. And one most important advantages of this tool is if you have an idea of this tool, like how it works, it will be easy for you to understand other open-source tools as well.
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