Career advice for aspiring data practitioners
If you are reading this you were probably considering a career change lately. I am assuming that you want to learn somewhat close to software engineering and database design. It doesn’t matter what your background is — marketing, analytics or finance, you can do this! This story is to help you find the fastest way to enter the data space. Many years ago I did the same and never regretted since then. Technology space and especially data is full of wonders and perks. Not to mention remote working and massive benefit packages from the leading IT companies, it makes you capable of doing magic with files and numbers. In this story, I’ll try to summarise a set of skills and possible projects which could be accomplished within two to three months timeframe. Imagine, just a few months of active learning and you are ready for your first job interview.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Why data engineering and not data science?
Indeed, why not Data Analytics or Data Science? I think the answer resides in the nature of this role as it combines the most difficult parts of these worlds. To become a data engineer you would need to learn Software engineering and database design, Machine Learning (ML) models, and understand data modelling and Business Intelligence (BI) development.
Data engineering is the fastest growing job according to DICE. They conducted research to demonstrate that there is a gap so be quick.
While Data Scientists have been considered to be the “sexiest” job in the market for a long time now it seems there is a certain lack of Data Engineers. I can see a massive demand in this area. This includes not only experienced and highly qualified engineers but also entry-level roles.
Data engineering has been one of the fastest-growing careers in the UK over the last five years, ranking 13 on LinkedIn’s list of the most in-demand jobs in 2023 [1]. On…
