97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know

Chapter 9. Building a Career as a Data Engineer

Vijay Kiran

Organizations across every sector are realizing the importance of data and maintaining strong data operations. Its recognition as a powerful business asset has seen the emergence of dedicated data teams comprising full-time roles for data scientists, architects, analysts, and, crucially, data engineers. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at how aspiring professionals can take that all-important step onto the data engineer career ladder.

Data engineering encompasses many overlapping disciplines. It is hard to chart a single route to becoming a data engineer. Studies in areas like information and communications technology (ICT) or software engineering will help, but I’ve also seen amazing data engineers with degrees in physics and mathematics. Career paths are also varied. Strong data engineers on my team have joined from roles as diverse as sales, operations, and even marketing. As long as you have basic experience in writing small scripts and running data-cleansing projects, you should be ready to take your first steps into the world of data engineering.

So, if background isn’t so important, what are some of the skills an aspiring data engineer needs to succeed? Three standout skills will give you an important head start.

The first of these is solid experience across the software development life cycle. I may be a bit ...