Eight years after my original post on building data science teams, the landscape has transformed dramatically. From the experimental “unicorn hunting” of 2017 to today’s systematic, specialized team construction, here’s what’s changed and what works in 2025.

As you may know I regularly work for Data Science Retreat - a boot camp style program, where participants (with prior experience) are trained to be freshly minted data scientists. Over the course of three months they also build a (larger) portfolio project that are presented on a demo day.

On …