Data workers are living like rock stars. I don’t mean trashing hotel rooms and jumping off second-story homes into pools after dropping LSD. I mean, they’re living jet-set lifestyles—and the future looks even brighter.
Pass on this opportunity and it will become one of those moments that you look back on with regret—knowing you had the time and dedication to change your life. Data engineering is the hottest job market in tech. It’s a critical role as companies shift to cloud services. The pay is outstanding—averaging $119k. Companies are hiring in every major market—and some are even looking for remote work. In 25 weeks, you could find yourself interviewing for one of those jobs.
The cloud. If you don’t know what it is, you’re probably on the wrong page. You probably also don’t realize it’s been integrated into just about every service or good in the U.S. market. Those organic wood blocks you bought for your kids—the company website has tutorials on what to build and lets you create your own that are saved under your profile. That Swiss chard you got at the farmer’s market—the farmer uses weather data trends stored on the cloud to find the precise time each year to plant their crops.
You can search the web and get lost trying to find information about what tools data engineers use every day. Instead of guessing, let’s find out what tools the data engineers at Tura.io use. Their data engineers work with major companies, so they must know what critical tools you need to learn to be a data engineer. Let’s take a look:
Data engineers need to have a holistic view of a company—because they’re impact is felt across it. They’re in the front end, the back end, and everywhere in-between. They’re in constant interaction with facets in the company as well as people who exist outside the flow chart—like customers. Let’s look at how they interact:
The most important benefit of a profession is job availability. Right now, data engineering jobs are available in abundance. In fact, there are more jobs than data engineers to do them. The 2020 Dice Tech Jobs Report analyzed six million job postings and found data engineering jobs grew 50% between 2019 and 2020. That’s the highest of any tech industry specialization. A Burtch Works survey confirms the need for data engineers continues. Of 320 data engineering employers polled in mid-2021, 80% said they planned to hire data engineers in the second half of the year.
There are two paths you can take to become a data engineer. One is to self-learn. It’s doable for people who already work in tech as we explain here. But it’s not recommended for people who want to shift careers into tech.
There are two paths to becoming a data engineer. One is to take a boot camp to learn the latest tools. As we explain here, it’s the best route for someone who does not have extensive tech experience. The other path is through self-learning. It’s a difficult way to learn these tools but not impossible.
Lyft surpassed one billion riders back in 2018. Think of how much collection, storage, and transmission of data that requires. That’s why Lyft has a team of data engineers. They process data from millions of GPS logs from rides that already happened in the area and hundreds or thousands of rides that are happening at that moment. The data includes current GPS stats, current ride requests, and historic ride statistics.
I see data engineers as being similar to droids in Star Wars. In every movie, they’re in the background repairing ships for starfighters, delivering critical information between Jedi, moving cargo for smugglers, and translating languages for blue milk farmers. It’s easy to overlook droids because most don’t play prominent roles, but they do keep rebel and imperial forces up and running...at least until the blasters start pew pewing.
