I interview probably two to three people a week for a DS job. It's a really difficult role to hire for. I'm basically looking for mathematicians with some knowledge of stats who also enjoy coding and follow best practices in coding (i.e. They didn't just pick it up and hack something that works but care enough to document and structure so others can follow it at a minimum) but we also need the MBA component as well,…
Interesting, thanks. It obviously depends a lot on the job but I would have thought that a good math background (which typically CS grads should have) would be enough for many applications. Especially since you mention the business problem aspect. I think that you can actually get quite far in DS (at least in deep learning) with rather "basic math". Unless you're innovating at the bleeding edge it's usually enough to reproduce existing ideas and applying them to interesting problems is the real key.
So my hiring would have focused on CS grads with a natural interest in math, ideally very rigorous/meticulous.