What Is a Data Engineer?: A Guide to This In-Demand Career
By: Albert Christopher
Tags: Certification, Data Engineering, Big Data Engineer

A big data engineer plays a crucial role in handling the data that is churned out by the digital activities. They effectively build, develop, test and take care of data storage architecture, which include databases and huge-scale data processing systems.

To develop these they require certain skills, which can be developed with the help of data engineer certification. If a person is seeking the best route to get an edge, then certification is the best option.

What is data engineering?

Data engineering is the method of developing and building systems for collecting, storing, and analyzing the data. It is a wide area with many applications in several industries. Many companies have collected massive amounts of data, and they need data infrastructure and personnel to sort and analyze the information.

This gave rise in the demand for big data engineers who work to design systems, which collect, manage, and convert raw data into usable information for data scientists and business analysts to interpret. The main goal is to make data accessible so that the companies can take care of it for evaluating and optimizing the business’s overall performance.

In this article, let’s dive deeper and understand about the crucial aspects, which a person requires for a career in data engineering.

Earn an undergraduate degree

The most crucial aspect to start the career in the field of data engineering is to have a bachelor’s degree, as the job demands a sound knowledge of several basic concepts. One can do a degree in any of the following:

· Computer Science

· Software Engineering

· Information Technology

Have a better understanding of programming

The area of data engineering needs sound coding skills. A data engineer should possess a good programming background. They must have a keen interest in data and seeking patterns in data. One can enhance their knowledge of the programming languages by doing a data engineering certification. The essential programming languages one possesses knowledge are as follows:

a)Python

b)R

c)Java

d)Scala

Learn latest technologies

One must have a sound knowledge of the latest technologies, which are essential to perform the day-to-day tasks. Following are the essential tools that the big data engineers use:

· Apache Hadoop

· Apache Spark

· Apache Hive

· Apache Beam

· Apache Cassandra

· Apache Oozie

· Apache NiFi

· Apache Flink

· Apache HBase

· Apache Impala

· Apache Kafka

· Apache Crunch

· Apache Apex

· Apache Storm

· Heron

· Hue

One can also begin with the three giants in the market: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learning these latest technologies will be useful for an individual to offer the best inputs that can be helpful for developing scalable data pipelines.

Develop communication skills

It is very crucial to build one’s communication skills to be part of this growing field. A good data engineer must have the following qualities:

· Communication skills: This job role demands interacting with people like stakeholders to know their demands before development.

· Ability to design: In their job role a data engineer creates simple creative designs where the architecture is not overly done.

· Detail Oriented: Data quality plays a key role in developing data pipelines. The quality and integrity of the data in the pipeline will determine the quality of the rest of the task.

Enhance technical skills

One should be familiar with the following technical skills:

· Database systems (SQL and NoSQL)

a)Structure Query Language (SQL)

b)NoSQL

· Cloud Computing

· Machine Learning

Data engineer salary

Data engineering is a well-paying job. The average salary in the US is $111,933. Even a few data engineers earn almost $164,000 per annum, according to Glassdoor.

Get professional certifications

There are several industry-recognized data engineer certifications that an individual can do to improve their skills before beginning their career in this field. Certification gives excellent knowledge and guidance by giving exposure to real-time projects.

Gain entry-level job experience

One of the best aspects to get entry into the field of data engineering is, by getting an entry-level job. There are several companies mainly start-ups that are providing great job opportunities for qualified graduates. After a person gains good experience, try problem solving is highly recommended on public data sets and for building a system.

End Notes

Certifications measures a person’s knowledge and skills about the industry and vendor-specific benchmarks to prove to the employers that a person possess the right kind of skillset and is best fit for the job.