Data Engineering For Novice

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Hello Everyone,

In today’s IT industry, you’ll see there are many job profiles, especially revolving around the word ‘data’ like Data Engineer, Data Analyst, Data Scientists.

Being a newcomer, it is always confusing what career to pick.

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This blog will help you to understand data engineering from a newbie perspective and covers the following points:

1. What is data engineering
2. Roles and responsibility of Data Engineer
3. Phoenix Checklist (General technical prerequisites)

What is Data Engineering?

Data Engineering is a field where we design and build data systems and tailor scalable and maintainable solutions.

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When we think of building data-intensive applications, we need to think of

1. Data Quantity

2. Data Complexity

Roles and responsibility of Data Engineer

So, if you’re or want to be a data engineer, what is the job brief for you? Here it is.

1. Obviously, your job will revolve all-around data, building the pipelines, and automating them.
2. Ensuring data reliability, quality, and consistency
3. Understanding the disparate data sources from where the data needs to be extracted and ingested into the system
4. Understanding the business needs and evaluating the data solutions accordingly.

The ultimate objective is to align data systems with the business goals.

Phoenix Checklist

Now that you’re well aware of what a data engineering job looks like, let’s see what skills can be required.

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1. Programming Language(s)
2. Understanding of Databases
3. Understanding of Cloud technologies

While those are the basic prerequisites, this as well depends on the role you’re applying to.

Python, Scala, and/or Java are the most preferred programming languages for data engineering.

PySpark framework is also a requirement for applications where data streaming is essential.

A basic understanding of the databases like SQL and/or NoSQL is mandatory for data engineering roles.

Cloud technologies play an important role to build maintainable and scalable solutions. The famous ones are AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure.

Conclusion

Data is the new gold these days and data engineering is a field where you get an opportunity to tailor your solutions around data. The perks of being a data engineer are that you serve as a bridge in understanding the business requirements and at the same time making the data available for Data Analysts and Data Scientists. Also, this is a big chance to learn varieties of technologies from programming, data modeling to cloud technologies.

Book to deep dive into data engineering

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann

Thanks for reading!