What is the data engineer job description and salary in 2022? Are you wondering the difference between entry-level, senior, and process data engineer job descriptions? You’ve come to the correct location if you’re searching for answers. Over the years, data and its related disciplines have seen a paradigm shift. Previously, useful insights took the attention, but lately, data management has been recognized too. As a consequence, the position of data engineers has gradually risen in prominence. After data architect and cloud computing, it’s time for data engineering in the Hot and on the Rise series.
Data engineer job description (2022)
A data engineer is in charge of the design and development of data pipelines. They are the brains behind collecting data from a variety of sources.
Data scientists and data engineers are both involved in the field of data analytics. They develop and maintain data systems that are simple to understand and meet business needs.
A data engineer, or data systems engineer, is responsible for developing and maintaining data processing applications.
Data engineer job tasks
- Collaborating with senior executives and other experts to create unique data infrastructures.
- Conducting tests on their designs to detect flaws.
- Updating systems as required by the company’s demands.
Big data is revolutionizing how we conduct business and creating a need for data engineers that can handle huge amounts of data.
Data scientists typically work alone, and with a small team of data scientists, so there’s no question that data engineers must be able to collaborate. They can also assist the data science team by developing dataset procedures that may help with data mining, modeling, and production. As a result, their contribution is crucial in improving data quality.
The position of a data engineer entails assisting in developing and implementing business intelligence and data science solutions and related initiatives that produce a comprehensive data model for actionable data reporting and analysis for commercial, functional, business leadership, and team members.
Entry level data engineer job description
Data engineers working at entry-level jobs should anticipate that most of their daily duties will resemble any other entry-level engineering job: repairing bugs. Data engineers spend their time developing and maintaining data pipelines comparable to any other technology in that they must be routinely tested and changed.
Entry-level data engineers operate under the direction of senior-level data engineers to keep these systems running. Entry-level data engineers learn the skills they need to progress their careers into more advanced roles, such as designing and building these systems by fixing bugs and eventually implementing small features.
Senior data engineer job description
The main responsibilities of the senior data engineer include:
- Developing a data model.
- Maintaining a data warehouse and analytics environment.
- Writing scripts for data integration and analysis.
This position will collaborate and work closely with the Data & Analytics team members to establish needs, mine and analyze data, integrate disparate data sources, and deploy high-quality data pipelines to support the analytics needs of wherever they work.
Process data engineer job description
Develop, analyze, and implement internal process changes. Redesign data delivery and scalability by re-engineering it. Create the framework for optimum extraction, transformation, and loading of data from various sources using SQL and AWS technologies. Process data engineers sssist the senior data engineer in creating, maintaining, and dealing with numerous situations.
Data engineer salary
Data engineering is a lucrative profession as well. According to Glassdoor, the median annual pay for data engineers in the United States is $115,176, with some earning as much as $168,000 per year.
Data engineer skills
What qualifications should you have if you want to choose this promising profession? Here are the seven data engineering skills that every data engineer should have:
SQL
Data engineers must master the important skill-set of R with SQL. You can’t run an RDBMS without knowing SQL well. To accomplish this, you’ll need to memorize many queries. It’s more than simply remembering a query to learn how to create optimized queries in SQL.
Data warehousing
Obtain a basic understanding of data warehouse construction and usage; it’s an important skill. Data warehousing aids data engineers in aggregating unstructured data from numerous sources. It is then compared and evaluated to improve company operations efficiency.
Data architecture
Data engineers must have the ability to create sophisticated business database systems. It is concerned with activities that deal with data in motion, data at rest, datasets, and the connection between data-dependent processes and applications.
Coding
Data scientists and data engineers typically know programming languages such as C#, Java, Python, R, Ruby, Scala, and SQL. Python, R, and SQL are the three most essential languages spoken by data analysts.
Operating system
You’ll need to be familiar with operating systems such as UNIX, Linux, Solaris, and Windows.
Machine learning
Data science is most associated with machine learning. However, if you have a basic understanding of how data can be utilized for statistical analysis and data modeling, it will help you as a data engineer.
Data engineer responsibilities
The Data Engineer’s job entails keeping an optimal pipeline architecture in place and performing various other tasks and responsibilities. Typical duties and obligations of a data engineer position may include:
- Assembling huge, complex collections of information that fulfill non-technical and functional business demands.
- Identifying, developing, and implementing internal process improvements, including re-designing infrastructure for increased scalability, improving data delivery, and automating routine procedures.
- Build the infrastructure required to extract, transform, and load data from various data sources using AWS and SQL technologies.
- Analyze data from the business to make more informed decisions with analytical tools that utilize the data pipeline and provide practical insight into important company performance indicators such as operational efficiency and consumer acquisition.
- Working with stakeholders such as data, design, product, and executive teams to solve data-related technical difficulties.
- Working with executives, product, data, and design teams to assist them with their data infrastructure demands while resolving technical difficulties.
Data engineering roles
Data engineers are in charge of overseeing analytics in a company. Data engineers give your data velocity. It’s difficult for firms to make immediate decisions and figure out fraud, attrition, and customer retention metrics. For example, data engineers may assist an e-commerce firm in determining which products will have the most demand in the future. Similarly, they might be able to target varied buyer personas and provide more customized experiences to their clients by using them.
A data engineer’s job may vary from day to day, depending on the sort of firm they work for it. Data engineers may be categorized into a few groups based on their duties:
- Generalist
- Pipeline-centric
- Database-centric
Generalist
A data engineer works on a small team most of the time. Without a data engineer, data analysts and scientists won’t be able to analyze anything because they don’t have any data to work with it. A data scientist needs a dedicated first member of the team.
When a firm has only one data engineer, they are frequently forced to take on more end-to-end duties. For example, a generalist data engineer may be required to do everything from ingesting the data to processing it through the final analysis. Because small teams and businesses don’t have many users, scalability engineering isn’t as essential. This is an excellent area for a data scientist interested in moving into data engineering.
Pipeline-centric
A pipeline-centric data engineer is required for mid-sized businesses with complicated data science requirements. A pipeline-centric data engineer will collaborate with teams of data scientists to convert raw data into an analyzable form. This requires an extensive understanding of distributed systems and computer science.
Database-centric
A data engineer who focuses on databases is concerned with setting up and populating analytics databases. This includes some pipeline development, although more database tweaking is necessary to enable rapid analysis. To get data into warehouses, you must perform ETL work. A typical example of a company employing a database-centric data engineer would be one with many data analysts that have their data strewn across numerous databases.
How to become a data engineer?
To be hired as a data engineer, you’ll need a Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, or another IT-related discipline. Certifications might be useful. This position demands a deep understanding of theoretical concepts.
It would help if you were conversant in database systems and data warehousing. It would be best if you also understood how to compare data storage solutions. Understand the differences between relational and non-relational database structures. This entails both SQL and NoSQL skills.
During your education, try out for personal projects and tackle difficulties. Begin with modest tasks and use various ideas one by one. To improve your abilities, gradually join open source initiatives. These talents will provide you with new opportunities. Begin with an entry-level job recommended.
Data engineer certifications
The following are just a few of the numerous popular data engineer certifications:
- The Institute for Certification of computing professionals, or ICCP, offers the Certified Data Professional certificate as part of its general database professional program. Several tracks are available. To pass the test, candidates must be members of the ICCP and pay a yearly membership fee.
- The Cloudera Certified Professional Data Engineer test assesses a candidate’s skill in ingesting, transforming, storing, and analyzing data in Cloudera’s data tool environment. The four-hour exam costs money. Five to 10 hands-on activities are involved, with scores ranging from 70% to pass. Candidates should have considerable experience.
- The Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer assesses an individual’s competence in applying machine learning algorithms, ensuring data quality, and constructing and managing data processing systems. The two-hour multiple-choice examination has a cost. There are no prerequisites for this job, but it requires knowledge of the Google Cloud Platform.