At many DS jobs you will be working closely with developers Where I work we prefer DS canidates that have some SE background and could comfortably deploy a mod

At many DS jobs you will be working closely with developers Where I work we prefer DS canidates that have some SE background and could comfortably deploy a model (even if it's just to heroku) We pass on a lot of really smart DS applicants who havent had the SE xp, simply because many of them would take a lot longer to get up to speed This is just one data point, and some DS jobs probably wont require the SE xp, but hope it helps & best of luck!