Data engineers are IT professionals who are highly demanded in almost every industry. Nowadays, it is the highest paid profession in the job market. This is all due to the evolution of technology. Organizations collect a vast amount of data in unstructured form. Professionals need to structurize this data and help the organizations convert raw data into valuable assets. Organizations further use this data to make needful decisions in the industry.
Anyone interested in playing with numbers or in the statistics field can become a data engineer. All they need to do is polish their skills by joining data engineering online courses or internships to join the industry. However, certain skills are required to become a data engineer. In this post, we will discuss all those relevant skills in detail.
What Do Data Engineers Do?
Data engineers are responsible for developing and maintaining the systems used in various projects by data scientists. They ensure that data flow between applications and services will go steadily.
Data engineering is the combination of data science and software engineering. Data engineers often develop and integrate new software and management technologies into existing systems and streamline data collection and use processes.
Essential Skills Require to Become a Data Engineer
Data engineers must possess some of the relevant technical as well as soft skills to perform their duties and responsibilities efficiently, which are as follow:-
1. Coding
Coding is essential to making data systems, and equipping the coding skills is mandatory to get a job as a data engineer. A candidate must possess at least a basic understanding of programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Per, Scala, Golan, Java, SAS, R, MatLab, C, and C++ to get employed in junior positions in the data engineering domain.
2. Knowledge of Operating Systems
As a data engineer, you must comprehend operating systems like Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, and UNIX. These systems are used for cloud computing the data.
3. Basic Knowledge of Data Analysis
Most employers expect data engineer candidates to have a solid understanding of analytics software, particularly Apache Hadoop-based solutions like MapReduce, Hive, Pig, and HBase.
4. Data Warehousing
It is the responsibility of data engineers to store and analyze an incredible amount of data. They can only perform this responsibility when they have a handful of experience using data warehousing solutions, such as Redshift or Panoply.
5. Knowledge of Database Systems
Database management is the specialty of data engineers. Learning Structured Query Language (SQL) in-depth is quite beneficial to understanding database systems better. A database coding language called SQL is used to extract and manage data from tables. However, if you intend to undertake freelance data engineering, you should also learn about other database options like Bigtable or Cassandra.
6. Basic Understanding of Machine Learning
Meanwhile, data scientists primarily use machine learning to research the data further. Still, it can be helpful for data engineers to at least have basic knowledge of machine learning. You will be able to build valuable solutions for peers and establish yourself as an incredible asset to any organization by developing your knowledge of data modeling and statistical analysis.
7. Communication Skills
As a data engineer, you’ll work collaboratively with teams who don’t have the technical expertise, which is why it is essential to possess excellent communication skills to convey your thoughts to them clearly. Most of the time, you must share your findings and suggestions with peers without technical expertise, even if you often work with other data experts, such as data scientists and architects.
8. Critical Thinking
Data engineers must be able to evaluate problems and then offer innovative yet practical solutions. Critical thinking skills are essential because there are numerous occasions when you may need to create a solution that doesn’t already exist.
Data Engineer Career Path
The career path of a data engineer is straightforward and sorted. You must first complete your graduation with computer science or mathematics as your subjects, join a certification program in data engineering to comprehend the knowledge, and start internships in the same domain to get hands-on experience. Internships are essential to start your career as a data engineer as you will get practical experience in the data engineering field.
Data Engineer Job Description
Below is an outline of the job description of a data engineer. This outline will help you to identify better what you will be doing in your day-to-day duties:
- Database software system design, implementation, verification, and tracking.
- Extracting and uploading the data from one database to another.
- Creation of data structure that makes it easy for you to understand, process, and surface data for large-scale applications.
- To merge systems, use a variety of scripting languages while comprehending the subtleties and advantages of each.
- Collaborate with the teams of data architects, analysts, and data scientists.
- Learn how to collect data in innovative ways and how to use data already in existence.
Conclusion
Data engineering is the future of the data industry. If you want to make your career in the data industry, data engineering is the best field to choose. You don’t even require higher education to join the same domain, and a certification course would be enough to start your career as a data engineer.
Hero Vired is an online platform started by the Hero Group to educate interested students who want to make their careers in industry-oriented fields. This premium institute also offers data engineering courses, and you can visit their official website to get the course details.