Are Data Engineers in Demand?

Today’s data science field is incredibly wide and involves everything from cleaning data to deploying predictive models. Data Engineers design and prepare the big data infrastructure to be analyzed by Data scientists. They are software engineers who design, create, and integrate data from various resources and manage big data. They can give easier access to raw data to understand the company’s or client’s objectives. They transform data into a useful format for analysis.

Data engineers are very important members of any organization’s data analytics team. Their vital role is responsible for optimizing, managing, overseeing, and monitoring data retrieval storage and distribution throughout the organization. Data engineers are also responsible for searching trends/patterns in data sets and developing algorithms to help make raw data more useful.

The data engineer’s role required a specific set of technical skills that involves deep knowledge of multiple programming languages and SQL database design. Therefore several people who want to start their career with big data, are seeking a big data course in Chennai and other training programs to land a career in this domain. They also need some soft skills such as collaboration and good communication skills to work along with other departments to understand what business leaders want to gain from the company’s large datasets. Here it is also important to have business goals while working with datasets and databases.

This article is about data engineer’s job roles, duties, responsibilities, and their demand in the IT job market.

Data Engineer – Roles And Responsibilities

We know that data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining a company’s entire data ecosystem that includes everything from data sources and databases to data storage solutions. But there are also many key roles and responsibilities that a data engineer takes up; some of them are explained below.

• Primary Work on Raw data- The Data Engineer’s responsibility is to perform primary operations on raw data that involve analyzing and organizing the raw data. They develop machine learning models of classification or clustering to scan, label, and categorize entity extraction, classification, and geotagging that give rise to structured data. They convert unstructured data into a usable format and make greater access to major computing power.
• Building A Pipeline- The main responsibility of a data engineer is to build data pipelines that are used to transport data from a data source to a data warehouse. These are very important for any organization as they enable them to access and analyze the data. These pipelines are working according to established business rules or a line of exploratory analysis the business wants to undertake.
• Find Trends And Patterns- Sometimes Data engineers have to play the role of data scientists and data analysts, including performing complex data analysis to find and interpret patterns and trends. They report on the results in the form of reports, dashboards, and data visualization. But in the big-size companies, there are working alongside data scientists or analysts to provide the IT infrastructure for data projects.
• Creation of Algorithms and Prototypes- Data engineers build algorithms and prototypes as data pipelines represent automated actions that extract data from several sources of visualization and analysis. These processes are powered by data algorithms.

Along with these duties, data engineers are also responsible for some crucial work such as Developing analytical tools and programs, Collaborating with data scientists and architects on projects, Preparation of data for prescriptive and predictive modeling, Evaluating business needs and objective, Data acquisition, Improvement of data reliability, quality, and efficiency, Use large data sets to address business issues, Deployment of a sophisticated analytics program, statistical methods and machine learning, Delivery updates and report to stakeholders based on analytics.

Demand for Data Engineers

“Data Engineers are more in demand than Data Scientists.”

A report from the Dice 2020 Tech job Report states that data engineer is the fastest-growing job in the technology, with a 50% growth in the number of open positions. Another report says that the demand for data engineers has been on the rise since 2016 and is continuously growing. Several companies are seeking data engineers as they are the key professionals who unlock the value of their data. But nowadays data engineer’s role has evolved and requires a larger set of skills. They need to leverage Machine Learning, AI, and Business Intelligence skills to effectively manage and analyze the data. Therefore several data engineers need to update themselves and learn new updated skills to face the competition and stay ahead of others.

It is witnessed that there is a chronic shortage of data engineering talent, and even there is the worst shortage of data engineers than the shortage of data scientists. Many say that the high demand for data engineers will continue to fuel a shortage of data engineering talent in 2022.

Salaries for Data engineers- According to Glassdoor, Data Engineers can earn an average of $137,776 per year, with a reported salary range of $110,000 to $155,000 depending on skills, experience, and location. The average salary for a senior data engineer is around $ 172,603 per year, with a reported salary range of almost $152,000 to $194,000.

Top Hiring companies- There are several major companies such as CVS Health, Capital One, USAA, Accenture, Walmart, Oracle, Leidos, Bayer, Discover, JPMorgan Chase, Tesla, Apple, NTT, Facebook, Randstad Technologies, P&G, Deloitte, and many more hiring Data Engineers for their company’s better business and growth.

Bottom Line

Data Engineers are in great demand nowadays as they lay the foundation in many projects. They play a vital role in data-related tasks and issues. Apart from the focus of companies to designate data preparation tasks to data engineers, the fact that most businesses are migrating to the cloud has further increased the demand for data engineers. So, grab the opportunity and become a data engineer to explore your potential.