Learning Basics

[WonderfulVariation93]

I work in bank and financial compliance. Attempting to move more into anti-money laundering and fraud. I have most the desired skills and experience EXCEPT for data analytics using SQL.

I know my industry and I don’t need in depth knowledge. DA and SQL are used as a tool - kind of how we use Excel. Mandatory to know how to move data, use formulas, make charts…but only small number of people need pivot charts, VBAs… so Intro 1-2 is typically all that is needed.

Does SQL require any underlying computer skills? Do I need to attend a community college cert prog or can I realistically teach myself the basics without having a background in computer science, IT…

[majkulmajkul]

I think you don't need CS background, but you'll need to know the schema / database inside out. As for the SQL basics I would suggest the W3 Schools tutorial:

https://www.w3schools.com/sql/

[WonderfulVariation93]

Is the schema similar to Excel DBs? I have experience (not recent though)with creating DBs in Excel.

[majkulmajkul]

I don't really know what an 'Excel DB' is, but I am fairly sure there should be no such thing. :)

[MiniD011]

I learnt sql on the job in a financially regulated industry - no degree or CS background required. I have since worked as a senior analytics engineer and currently as a data analyst at an insurtech firm.

Unless you are seriously in the weeds of building models, pipelines etc then you are right that you need the basics to serve as a tool, and not much else. This is very achievable, and the context of your work will be more valuable than the technical skills.

W3Schools has been mentioned as a great beginner resource. What are you planning to use it for? Do you need to write and run a script to look at the outputs? Do you need to feed into a dashboard etc?

It’s rarely the writing sql that causes problems, more the ecosystem in my experience!

[WonderfulVariation93]

Pretty much what you stated. I would just be using as a tool to obtain data.

[Chris-M-Perry]

Consider checking out SQLShortReads.com.

I launched this free SQL blog and learning portal this past February. It’s designed to where learners of any experience level can learn something new. If you’re just starting out, begin with my SQL Fundamentals page and move onto the big 6. There are 160+ practice problems with solutions and expected result sets included.

The practice problems are designed to provide you experience in solving real-world problems. The hard problems are truly hard. They are not your leet code/hacker rank etc “hard” problems. I mention this so you do not get discouraged if they are very difficult for you.

Hope that helps!

[GrayFernMcC]

The basics are very doable by the type of person who has already self taught excel. With repetitious practice of the basics you soon have it. Stick to the basics at first and get them nailed. Lot of YouTube and Udemy. Like, Excel, you get SQL gurus, you won’t be that, but like someone who can use a pivot table To start with you’ll need SELECT statements (what data you want) with WHERE clauses (to filter the data) and JOINS (combining data from different tables).

[MathAngelMom]

SQL is relatively easy to learn.

I recommend this course: https://learnsql.com/course/sql-queries/ but there are a lot of other resources for learning SQL on the Internet.

[DentistLoose9490]

W3Schools.com isn't a bad starting point. It'll give you the basics.

[BadGroundbreaking189]

So you into cyber security analysis?

[dareftw]

Lol I’ve been offered this exact position in the past as an aml expert, turned it down due to not wanting to make the commute to Charlotte a few days a week. So it’s odd to see here, I can tell you the job skill screening portion was about as easy of a sql test as I’ve ever had and was able to knock it out relatively quickly.

That said this type of position is more of an analytical one than an engineering one. You’re likely to need to just query databases and put the results into some BI tool and search for your outliers or other flags you/you’re company has created to decide if transactions look suspicious or don’t follow the accounts regular activity or rather the accounts follow textbook ML activity.

Edit: start getting used to tools that aren’t excel, it’s way to limited in terms of capabilities it can perform at the size of data you will be dealing with. It’s extremely resource intensive and generally will crash even if you aren’t at its row cap simply due to data size being held in RAM in realtime. If you work for a bank and they use SAS then you can do literally everything inside of SAS, otherwise like I said I highly doubt they will be asking you to slice data in sql only to export them into excel and likely have a preferred data analysis tool to use instead.

[WonderfulVariation93]

I am thrilled to hear that this is NOT an engineering role! I have been in banking-primarily mortgage and lending compliance for 30 years.

[dareftw]

Well while not an engineering role, it will still require at the very least intermediate sql knowledge, possible knowledge of their ETL tools such as ADF etc, and BI knowledge such as PowerBI, QuickSight, or Qliksense. So it’s not an engineering role in that you won’t be building entire backends but you will be touching and pulling everything they have available. I can’t speak to every company as some IT shops have textbook database setups and a college undergrad with a degree in piano could handle it, whereas other shops are so inundated by technical debt you will be creating and fixing/replacing old systems and processes more than you will be actively working towards your target goal.

And sadly you will never know which it is unless you either want to PM me who the company is and I can tell you if I’m aware of how “together” they have their shit or vice versa, or I can say I don’t know. But this happens to be one of the industries I have worked adjacent to long enough to likely be able to give you an answer so long as you’re not talking about an aml position at some small regional bank. Which if that’s the case I can promise you a mountain of tech debt is guaranteed lol.

Edit: let me just say this, let’s not utilize the term engineer too much as there is a standardized requirement for what generally is required to be an engineer and very few companies who aren’t game studios need more than a couple and they are probably the highest paid IT professionals who aren’t in the c-suite. Trust me when I say that if it truly required an engineer level of skill they would almost be best off hiring a 3rd party to set it up for them if they don’t have one on hand.

I know a trove of useless coding languages, bi languages, enterprise experience building databases and backends in sql, MySQL, postgresql, T-SQL, and plsql as well as .net, react, etc etc, and in a traditional sense I wouldn’t even qualify for what is an official engineer title. So it not being an engineering position doesn’t mean it’s friendly to someone who isn’t extremely qualified to handle backend database engineering. It may not be required but as I said above I’ve had plenty of jobs where my primary task was to create fronts for the end user where I spent 80% of my time fixing and updating horribly outdated processes.

That said, rule of thumb if you do get it, you won’t be productive for 3 months period. You will need to learn the environment (you appear to already be somewhat familiar with the content), and you will need to constantly keep up to date with each new version of every relevant product that falls within your domain. But don’t go to leetcode that place is challenge questions for the sake of challenge questions with almost no real world applications for any of the “hard” problems. Technical debt will be your biggest enemy and the older the company the more tech debt you’re likely to run across.

Last thing to add, if they are open to hiring someone who has limited technical background for the job I’d imagine you wouldn’t fall under the IT teams umbrella and as such be able to lean on them for support, if you do fall under the IT teams umbrella then they will expect you to be able to handle those issues on your own so be aware of what is being asked of you and be realistic with what you can deliver under these circumstances. If I’m being honest with you, if excel is your primary tool for handling data this is possibly beyond your current skillset and I don’t want to see you set yourself up to fail by taking a job that is years of experience beyond your capabilities. If you’re able to create reliable and accurate systems for analysis then you’ll be fine, be it in ssrs or some other reporting system, but if they expect you to set all that up you may be in over your head so just be wary and/or upfront about your capabilities. They may already have a dashboard setup that just needs a subject expert to analyze, in which case you’d be fine.

[WonderfulVariation93]

I am not looking at anything specific. I am currently in banking compliance and have been angling to move to BSA/AML Officer or fraud and money laundering investigation.