I recently received two job offers, both remote and with the same pay. I’m torn between the two roles, and would appreciate some advice!
Company A (Fortune 500)
Role: Palantir Application Developer
This role involves working closely with senior leadership to develop Palantir applications and solve their business problems. It’s more focused on data engineering. My concern is that Palantir isn’t widely used because of its high cost, so there might not be many jobs available in the future. However, I would get a lot of exposure to senior leadership and the business side of things.
Company B (Health System)
Role: BI Analyst
Here, I’d be leading data science collaborations. They don’t have a full data science team yet, so there’s a lot of room for growth. They use Dataiku for machine learning, and there’s an opportunity to transition into a data science role over time.
Which position should I take? Any advice would be helpful!
You might want to ask on Blind to get insights from people in similar positions or companies. Including total compensation (TC) might also help get better feedback.
If you want to tie your career to a niche tool like Palantir, which is mostly used by defense contractors and law enforcement, then go for it. But personally, I’d rather take a role with room to grow and more opportunities in data science. Leading a data science team sounds way more fulfilling than being upper management’s app developer.
Be cautious about roles that promise you can ‘grow’ into another profession later. Often, that doesn’t happen. Choose the role that will challenge and interest you the most.
If you’re okay with working on a tool tied to controversial organizations like defense and law enforcement, Palantir might be the way to go. If you’d rather avoid that, maybe look at the BI Analyst role.
Just keep in mind that Palantir skills may not transfer easily to other jobs since it’s a niche tool. Some of the tech it uses is valuable, like Spark, but a lot of it is specific to their platform.