Data engineering is one of the hottest career paths today and the demand for professionals in this field is at an all-time high.
In fact, many HR professionals have deemed it to be a recession-proof career path since almost every organization could benefit from a data professionals’ expertise and skill set.
Additionally, there will be more than 3 million available data-related jobs in 2021, according to Analytics Insight.
If you’re ready to be a data engineer, you’ll need some intel on the skills, salary and job landscape. Here’s everything you need to know about data engineering jobs and how can you land one.
Everyone Needs Data Engineers in 2021
The income potential for a data engineer is impressive. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for data engineers in the United States is $103,000 and can go up to $158,000 annually.
Some of the highest paying employers in the field include companies like:
- CISCO Systems – $160,131
- Facebook – $149,570
- Amazon – $107,445
Capital One, IBM and HP are other top companies paying some of the highest salaries in the field.
A search on LinkedIn shows more than 75,000 data engineer jobs open right now in the U.S. What’s more, some of the best companies and highest paying employers in the field — Amazon, Facebook, Capital One, Apple and Spotify — are hiring right now.
Skills You Need to Bag the Best Data Engineering Jobs
Landing a data engineer interview starts with a solid resume that highlights the right skills. Potential employers need to see that you have hands-on experience with the data engineering skills you’ll be using daily on the job.
According to Payscala, having the right skills can increase your salary anywhere between 12% – 34%. Here are some of the top skills data engineers need and the potential percentage increase in salary you can expect.
- Ruby: +34%
- MapReduce: +28%
- JavaScript: +24%
- Amazon Redshift: +22%
- Apache Cassandra: +19%
- Apache Kafka: +18%
- Apache Sqoop: +14%
- Data Quality: +13%
- Scala: +12%
- Statistical Analysis: +12%
Roles and Responsibilities of a Data Engineer
The role of a data engineer is highly dynamic and can become as complex as the technology stack used in the organization. For instance, if an organization uses machine learning and artificial intelligence their data will inherently be more resource-heavy and complex so the role of that organization’s data engineers will also be more complex.
Here are some of the best jobs in the data engineering field:
Security Analyst: Data breaches are a growing concern for global organizations. For instance, just recently Spotify filed a data breach notification with the Attorney in California declaring that a vulnerability in the system exposed the user account details of an undisclosed number of its users.
Data security analysts with data engineering skills tend to manage security attacks better and faster as they can understand data and deploy solutions more efficiently.
There is a growing need for cybersecurity professionals who can identify, correct and respond to security threats.
Business Intelligence Analyst: The role of a business intelligence analyst includes gathering data and information from different sources to evaluate the positioning of the company.
Organizations prefer BI professionals with data engineering skills because of their familiarity with complex data structures, artificial intelligence and machine learning and accuracy when analyzing data.
Data Administrator: A data administrator registers all the data in the database and creates artificial intelligence models to improve efficiency.
They use specialized software to store and analyze data. DBAs work with technology to set up databases according to a company’s needs and ensure their efficiency.
Prepare Now for the Best Data Engineering Jobs!
Today, businesses need data engineers in order to maximize their efforts and be successful. Regardless of whether the organization is scaling its data team, launching a big data initiative or developing custom data flows, the contributions a data engineer can make are invaluable.
To learn more about data engineering jobs, check out our Data Engineering Nanodegree program and learn to design data models, build data warehouses and data lakes, automate data pipelines and work with massive datasets.
Once you enroll, you’re one step closer to being ready for your first day as a data engineer.
