What Is a Data Visualization Specialist?

A data visualization specialist focuses on creating visuals that bring complex data to life, making it easier to understand and derive insights. Data visualization is one of the various career areas you can choose from within data professions, and it will likely continue experiencing significant growth for years to come. According to Grand View Research, the data visualization market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.4 percent through 2030 to reach a value of $22.12 billion in 2030, up from $10.39 billion in 2023 [1].

Given the tremendous data market growth, which will likely increase in the next decade, making sense of all that information will become increasingly vital. That’s where data visualization comes into play—it’s the key to unlocking data’s usefulness. The demand for professionals who can help businesses harness the power of data will continue rising, which suggests data visualization could offer ample opportunities, making it a favorable career path.  

Explore what a data visualization specialist job requires, including education and skills, to determine if the path aligns with your interests. 

What is data visualization?

As the name implies, data visualization converts data into visual formats to make the information easier to understand. To understand the potential power visualizations have, consider this: Imagine you have two documents in your hand containing the same information. The first is a massive spreadsheet with cells and numbers. The second has a pie chart and a graph. Which format would help you make sense of the details?

Human eyes naturally absorb colors and patterns, and visuals help grab people’s attention. Visuals can also provide interactive ways to explore opportunities presented by data, see patterns and relationships between data sets, and assess trends. 

Data visualization vs. data analytics

Data visualization professionals create visual representatives of vast data sets, while data analytics professionals study those data sets and derive conclusions from them using various analytic techniques. Data visualization is all about creating ways to portray the information without necessarily drawing your own conclusions. Data analytics focuses on studying data and using techniques like regression analysis, which identifies how two data points relate, or cluster analysis, which identifies similarities among groups of data points, to make recommendations or provide insights.  

What does a data visualization specialist do?

These professionals use data visualization tools and technology to create visualizations such as charts, diagrams, slideshows, and other graphical formats. As a data visualization specialist, you’ll convert data into visual format, vital in making data accessible and empowering less technical stakeholders who may rely on the information to understand it using popular tools like Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and Looker. In addition to providing powerful presentation benefits, the process is essential to data cleaning, exploring structures, uncovering patterns, and identifying patterns within the data. Visuals can reveal gaps or errors and help pinpoint outliers.

Types of data visualization specialists

As a data visualization specialist, you’ll find professional opportunities across various sectors, including health care, finance, and entertainment. Additionally, you can focus on specific types of visualizations or areas that align with your skills and interests or incorporate a broad range of visualizations into your repertoire. For example, you might specialize in data storytelling or dashboards. 

Data storytelling combines building a narrative audiences can understand, using data to support that narrative, and relying on visualizations to bring it all together. It can evoke an emotional response and effectively engage your audience while proving or disproving a theory or providing reasoning to aid decision-making.

Dashboards provide a customizable, high-level view of multiple data visualizations from various data sets, often with interactive elements and real-time updates.

Data visualization specialist tasks and responsibilities

As a data visualization specialist, your primary duties will likely vary according to your employer’s needs. However, they will revolve around designing visualizations and implementing them as needed. Other possible duties include:

• Collect, clean, and organize data

• Conduct analysis to interpret the data and guide the visualization process

• Build visualizations using various tools, including Power BI and Tableau

• Research and test new and emerging visualization technologies 

• Collaborate with others to ensure visualizations align with business objectives or needs

Entering data visualization from another career field

Making a relatively seamless switch from various careers into data visualization is possible. For example, if you already work in a data-related position, you may need to sharpen your design skills or take a visualization or graphic design course to help smooth the change. Similarly, if you work in an artistic job now, taking classes and sharpening your data analysis skills can prepare you to use your creativity in a new way. 

Data visualization specialist skills

Working in a position like this requires a combination of analytics, creativity, and an eye for appealing design that simplifies complex information. To succeed, you’ll need technical skills, like proficiency in using data visualization tools, and workplace skills, including attention to detail and performing as a team player. 

Technical skills

Technical skills are abilities specific to your role or the industry you work in. You typically accumulate them through education, formal training programs, and even while pursuing hobbies. Some of the technical skills critical for working in data visualization include the following:

• Ability to collect, clean, and analyze data 

• Proficiency in using visualization tools like Tableau, Power BI, 

• Research and assess data resources

• Firm grasp of statistical principles

• Numeracy is the ability to interpret mathematically based information

• Knowledge of programming languages like Python and R

• Familiarity with design principles to guide the creation of compelling visuals

Workplace skills

Although workplace skills will help you in every job, these skills aren’t specific to just one position. Instead, they aid you in each role you take throughout your career. Some of the workplace skills particularly necessary for working as a data visualization specialist include the following: 

• Audience awareness, including determining their ability to comprehend the information

• Communication and presentation skills to explain visualizations

• Creativity and the ability to use data to tell a “story” to engage the audience

• Active listening and empathy

• Ability to incorporate feedback into your work

• Attention to detail

• Adaptability

• Continuous learning 

Data visualization use cases

Data visualization adds value to nearly every industry. Check out three examples to gain a better understanding of the possibilities:

• In health care, doctors and other professionals can use mapping to assess how a particular disease or condition varies across different regions.

• Marketers can use visualizations to understand marketing strategies' effects on driving website traffic.

• In finance, professionals can use charts to analyze how prices of stocks or securities change with time.

Data visualization specialist salary and job outlook

Data-driven decision-making will continue aiding businesses, teams, and individuals in making sounder choices. As more companies rely on the vast amounts of data available, the need for skilled data professionals will also grow. 

Although the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t offer predictions specific to data visualization specialists, it does provide data about data scientists, an umbrella under which this job falls. In the decade leading up to 2032, the BLS anticipates data science professions to grow by 36 percent, with approximately 20,800 new jobs opening yearly [2].

In addition to a promising job outlook, you can also enjoy robust earning potential. Glassdoor’s February 2025 data shows that data visualization specialists' median annual base salary is $91,410. Various factors will determine your earning power. For example, for someone with less than one year of experience, the median salary is $67,545, while professionals with 15 or more years of experience earn $103,611. Keep in mind that these figures represent the base earnings, which don’t include additional pay like profit sharing or bonuses, which average $15,000 to $27,000 [3].

Data visualization specialist career path

As a data visualization specialist, you might work in various industries, including finance, retail, education, technology, and health care. As a relatively new position, you won’t find a single defined career path. Depending on your background and the requirements of employers, you may be able to get this job after earning your degree. In other instances, you might need to gain professional experience in jobs like a data visualization intern or a junior data scientist, a position that uses data visualization to present data-based findings. 

After working as a data visualization specialist, you might choose to pursue an advanced role in the field. For example, you could become an analytics manager overseeing other analytics and visualization team members. 

Data visualization education and training 

Although requirements will vary from employer to employer, having a bachelor’s degree is typically among the minimum qualifications employers seek from data visualization specialists. You might major in computer science, data analytics, or a similar study area. For more advanced roles, or to change careers, you might consider getting a master’s degree in data analytics, data science, or data visualization. 

Career changers or those with a degree in another area can also consider a data visualization certificate program. You might also consider getting certified. For example, you could pursue a Tableau Desktop Specialist credential, which validates your data preparation and visualization skills.

How to enter the data visualization field

Begin by researching the field and getting a feel for what data visualizations entail with introductory courses or attending workshops and engaging with the data visualization community. Doing so can help you determine if this is the proper direction for your career while also aiding you in building your professional network. From there, consider taking the following steps in your learning journey:

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1. Become familiar with popular visualization tools, including programming languages like R and Python, D3.js, Power BI, and Tableau.

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2. Sharpen your design skills by studying graphic design principles, color theory, and practical layout strategies.

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3. Practice creating visualizations like line charts, which offer a simple view of how variables change with time, or scatter plots, which help show relationships between variables.

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4. Look for opportunities to gain practical experience, including data visualization competitions, internships, or freelance projects—all of which can help build your professional portfolio. 

Begin your data visualization specialist career on Coursera

Data visualization is a dynamic career field within the broader scope of data science and analytics. Working as a data visualization specialist, you'll empower others with the visuals you create to help them make sense of data.

First, it’s critical to develop your foundational knowledge and skill set. Begin your career journey by exploring the field in more detail with beginner-friendly courses like Google’s Share Data Through the Art of Visualization or Data Visualization and Dashboards with Excel and Cognos from IBM. Once you have a feel for the basics, you might delve deeper into the subject with the Data Visualization and Dashboarding with R Specialization from Johns Hopkins or earn an Advanced Data Analytics Professional Certificate from Google. You’ll find these options and more to help you along your career journey on Coursera.