This story explains an accelerated way to take on the data engineering role by learning the necessary skills and becoming familiar with data engineering tools and techniques. It will be useful for entry-level IT professionals and intermediate-level software engineers looking to make a career change. Throughout my years as Head of Data Engineering for one of the most successful startups in the UK and Middle East, I have learned a lot from my career and I would like to share this knowledge and experience with you. This is a reflection of my personal experience in the field of data engineering that I gained over the last 12 years. I hope you find it useful.
Data engineer: the role
First of all, why be a data engineer?
Data engineering is an exciting and very rewarding field. It is a fascinating job where we have the opportunity to work with everything related to data: APIs, data connectors, data platforms, business intelligence and dozens of data tools available on the market. Data engineering is closely related to machine learning (ML). You will create and deploy all types of data and machine learning pipelines.
It definitely won’t be boring and it pays well.
It pays well because it is not easy to build a good data platform. It begins with requirements gathering and design and requires considerable experience. It is not an easy task and also requires very good programming skills. The work itself is safe because as long as companies generate data, this work will be in high demand.
Companies will always hire someone who knows how to process data (ETL) efficiently.
Data engineering has been one of the fastest growing careers in the UK over the past five years, ranking 13th on LinkedIn’s list of the most in-demand jobs in 2023 (1). The other reason to join is scarcity. In the IT space, it is incredibly difficult to find a good data engineer these days.
As a “Head of Data Engineering”, I receive 4 job interview invitations on LinkedIn every week. On average. Entry-level data engineering roles are found in…
