Informatica Mastery: Building a Successful Career"

Informatica Mastery: Building a Successful Career"

Why Informatica?

Informatica provides the market’s leading data integration platform. Tested on nearly 500,000 combinations of platforms and applications, the data integration platform inter operates with the broadest possible range of disparate standards, systems, and applications. This unbiased and universal view makes Informatica unique in today’s market as a leader in the data integration platform. It also makes Informatica the ideal strategic platform for companies looking to solve data integration issues of any size.

To get a better understanding on what Informatica PowerCenter is and its real life applications, I suggest you check out our blog on What is Informatica and Informatica Tutorial.

Which Informatica certification do I take?

Informatica certification is a two levelled structure :

  • Specialist – To achieve Specialist recognition, a candidate must pass a written exam, proctored in person or via webcam. The Specialist exam validates that the individual understands the product and can apply the skills and capabilities required to contribute to a project as a full team member.
  • Expert – To reach the Expert level an Informatica Certified Specialist must pass Informatica Velocity Best Practices and Implementation Methodologies Certification. This certification validates that you are able to lead a project implementation team following our best practices.

Some of the major certification exams from Informatica can seen below :

Informatica Certification- Informatica certification path

There are various certificates that Informatica offers and among them the most preferred are under Data Integration are two prominent tracks: Administrator and the Developer.

  • Data Integration: Informatica PowerCenter Administrator

Informatica certified Administrator are the professionals who monitor the environments, monitor and schedule loads(workflows), Recovery or Re-start in loads in case of any failures and Servers Monitoring. They are also responsible to manage Development ,QA and Production environments.

 

Prerequisites : Fundamental knowledge of SQL and basic Unix along with Informatica PowerCenter Training.

 

Who should go for this Certification?

Although anyone who is passionate about data integration and ETL in particular can go for this certification. The following professionals typically go for this certification:

Course Curriculum

Informatica Certification Training Course

  • Instructor-led Sessions
  • Real-life Case Studies
  • Assignments
  • Lifetime Access
  • Analytics Professionals.
  • BI/ETL/DW Professionals.
  • Mainframe Architects.
  • Individual Contributors in the field of Enterprise Business Intelligence.

 

  • Data Integration PowerCenter Developer

Informatica certified Developer are professionals who documents all technical and system specifications documents for all ETL processes, develop all data warehouse models, design and schedule workflows, Test ETL codes.

Prerequisites : Fundamental knowledge of SQL and basic Unix along with Informatica PowerCenter Training.

 

Who should go for this certification?

The following professionals can go for this Certification:

  • Software Developers.
  • BI/ETL/DW Professionals.
  • Mainframe Developer.
  • Individual Contributors in the field of Enterprise Business Intelligence.

 

Exam Structure

This exam measures your competency across installation and configuration, architecture, server maintenance, security, deployment, PowerCenter Repository management, web services, command line utilities and Informatica Velocity Best Practices and Implementation Methodology as a full member of a project implementation team.

Here are a few pointers to the exam:

  • 70 multiple choices questions
  • Test formats used in this exam are:
  1. Multiple Choice: Select one option that best answers the question or completes the statement
  2. Multiple Response: Select all that apply to best answer the question or complete the statement
  3. True/False: After reading the statement or questions select the best answer
  • 90 minutes allotted to complete the exam
  • 70% is the passing score
  • Registration fee is USD 240
  • If you do not pass on your first attempt, You must wait 2 weeks after the exam to take the exam again
  • You may take the exam up to three times in one year from the date of your first exam attempt
  • You must pay the full exam fee each time you take the exam.

Exam Test Domains

The test domains and the extent to which they are represented as an estimated percentage of the exam are as follows:

Inormatica Certification-Informatica Administrator


Reporting and analysis of data using data warehousing has been around for more than a decade, but of late, enterprises are finding the need to retrieve actionable insights from data. Quality of data has never been more important! Today, enterprises are investing heavily on effective data warehousing solutions that help them make sense of their own data, especially customer-centric data that directly affects business. This is how plenty of opportunities have opened up for career progression with Informatica. Consequently, there has never been a better time to embark on your career progression with Informatica. 

In a recent interview with Information Week, the new CEO of leading data warehousing and ETL giant, Informatica, Anil Chakravarthy mentioned that in 2016, the company is focusing its energies on six technologies; big data, cloud, data integration, master data management, data quality, and data security. Having figured out how to combine the cloud with big data, Informatica is now betting big on providing actionable insights around big data to enterprises worldwide. Informatica claims almost 100% go-live rates, which is unheard of in the IT industry. Add to it the fact that Informatica tools also enjoy a 94% customer loyalty rate, there is no doubt that Informatica is all set to redefine ETL and data warehousing.

This has opened up newer career opportunities and has given birth to more job roles around ETL, data processing and warehousing with Informatica. In this blog post, we will discuss how you can achieve career progression with Informatica.

Pre-Requisites for Informatica

The pre-requisites to learn Informatica include knowledge of SQL, especially functions, joins, sub queries etc. 

While any fresher can learn Informatica, knowledge of ETL, SQL and Data Warehousing Concepts will be helpful. Also, knowledge of Data Storage systems / applications is good to have although not mandatory as Informatica Powercenter is an application that is used to extract / load data from/to data storage systems such as RDBMS, BigData, CRMs, Social Media, Webservices, Flat Files, etc. 

Who can switch to Informatica?

Although any professional who is passionate about data integration can switch careers to Informatica, the most common job profiles to opt for Informatica careers are:
1. Software Developers
2. Analytics Professionals 
3. BI/ETL/DW Professionals
4. Mainframe developers and Architects
5. Individual Contributors in the field of Enterprise Business Intelligence

Informatica Job Roles

The most popular Informatica tools are Informatica PowerCenter, Informatica Power Exchange and Informatica Reporting Services. Informatica PowerCenter is the most widely used ETL Tool today. With its ability around efficient data partitioning, parallel processing, innovative caching techniques and bulk extraction, Informatica PowerCenter is being adopted by enterprises across all business domains. 

Some of the most popular Informatica job profiles are:

  • Informatica developer
  • Analyst
  • Informatica Consultant
  • MDM developer
  • Informatica Administrator
  • Informatica Application Developer
  • PM

Career Progression with Informatica

As a beginner, you can expect to get hired as an Informatica ETL Developer in the entry level and then work your way up to become a Senior/ Lead Developer.

After 7-10 years of experience, you can progress to the job role of Informatica Admin or Informatica Architect. Other BI and Data Warehouse skills could also give you an added advantage and help you become an ETL Architect or BI/Data Architect.

Course Curriculum

Informatica Certification Training Course

  • Instructor-led Sessions
  • Real-life Case Studies
  • Assignments
  • Lifetime Access

Informatica Job Profiles

According to JobGraphs.com, 37.3% of Informatica jobs are for the Developer position although there is an equal opportunity for Analysts, Architects and Consultants as well. The base salaries for each of these titles has been steadily growing over the last few months, and the upward spike is only likely to continue in the weeks to follow. According to ITJobsWatch, Informatica Developer jobs have gained 24 points between November 2015 and February 2016 to become one of the hottest jobs in the Data Warehousing domain.

Here’s a Google Trends report that captures the growing popularity of Informatica Developer job profile.

informatica jobs worldwide trend - career progression with informatica

Source: Google Trends

Informatica tool is used for much more than ETL and this is reflected in the fact that there are more than 100,000 trained Informatica Developers and a demand for an equal or more skilled workforce to join this domain. It is one of the most pervasive skill sets available in IT as most leading organizations depend on Informatica to curate data for application and analytical environments.

Informatica Salary

Reflecting the growing opportunities for professional with Informatica skills, the salaries for Informatica jobs is also seeing an upward trend. A quick research on Indeed.com shows that the average salary for Informatica Developers in the United States is $102,000, varying with experience.

informatica USA salary trend - career progression with informatica

In fact, the salaries also vary with job titles and skill levels in addition to number of years of experience. Here’s a graph that shows salaries with job titles.


informatica salary job title USA - career progression with informatica

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