Data scientists are in high demand, with Glassdoor listing them as the #1 job in the US based on number of openings, salary, and overall satisfaction. Wenfei Xu, a data scientist at CARTO, shares her five secrets for success, which include having a foundation in statistics to understand large datasets, studying design principles to effectively visualize data, practicing storytelling with data, finding a community or group to bounce ideas off of, and paying attention to tools, concepts, and programming languages such as Python, R, spatial analysis, cloud computing, and visualization libraries like Matplotlib.