There are a number of common job titles and roles for people who work with data. In our experience, the most common are data engineer, data architect, data scientist, and analyst. In this chapter, we provide a general overview of each of these roles, which actions in the workflow they tend to be responsible for, and some best practices for managing the hand-off between these roles and for driving the long-term success of your data practices.
Skills and Responsibilities
We’ll provide a basic overview of the four common job roles that we encounter when working with data. Of course, in smaller organizations or in personal projects, a single person can end up developing and applying all of the skills and responsibilities that we’ll discuss. However, it’s more common to split them into separate job roles.
Our discussion is oriented on two axes (see Figure 8-1). The first axis is focused on the primary kind of output produced by someone in the role. The second axis is focused on the skills and methods utilized to produce that output. We’ll discuss each role in turn.
Figure 8-1. Relative positions of the four key data wrangling user profiles based on output (internal or external) and skills (technically focused or business focused)
Data Engineer
Data engineers are responsible for the creation and upkeep of the systems that store, process, and move ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
