In this video, we will listen to
several data professionals talk about the different paths you
can take to get into data engineering. So there's a number
of ways of becoming a data engineer. You can get a degree
from a college or university in a field like software
engineering or computer science, and that's how I did it. But
this option can be expensive and it requires an investment of a
number of years of your life. And even then, you know, you will need to likely
supplement your skills with beyond what has been taught in school to match the
requirements of a real job. But if you already have a degree
in another field, or you simply don't have the luxury to invest
several years in getting a degree, you can do a shorter
diploma program or bootcamp in a physical location, or take
online courses and certificate programs, which can be both
part-time and full-time. So regardless of the option
that you choose, be careful about selecting the right program. Look at its cost,
the time it
takes to complete, whether it's from a reputed provider. Is the
content up-to-date? And look at the reviews. Talk to people
who have completed the program. And also make sure that the
program matches your learning style. Are you motivated enough
to self-learn online or do you require some hand holding?
You can become a data engineer from a variety of existing
roles. So if you are a System Administrator, that's a
good starting point. You can master an OS, a database, and
then you can become a data engineer. If you're a
database administrator, you're only one step closer to being a data engineer. If
you're an
automation engineer, if you are good at automating manual tasks,
then from that path you can move into being a data engineer. If you are a data
analyst you
already know a lot about data. So that's also a good starting
point for you to become a data engineer. If you're a
programmer, even from being a programmer, you can move into a data engineer. You
can start as
a DBA and transition into the data engineering, which worked
pretty well for some of my colleagues and myself. Another
path that I can think of is a natural transition into the data
engineering is from the ETL development track. Bottom line
is a data engineer should be very knowledgeable with the
databases and different kinds of data sources and data formats, and use that
knowledge to build the
data pipelines. And part from these technical skills and technical track, I think
academically if you have a background with the computer
science and mathematics, I think it will help you greatly. It
will reduce your time to become a great data engineer.
So the entire field of data engineering is relatively new.
And as I mentioned earlier, different companies also have
different requirements for each data engineer. So that basically
means there are lots of different ways, different paths,
you can get into data engineering. I have several colleagues at
Coursera they started computer science at college and
they entered into data engineering directly after
graduation. I also have some data engineer friends they used to be software
engineers. And those
folks that have very strong technical background before
entering into their engineering path but that's not really necessary. You can enter
into data engineering
without very strong computer science background. So my experience good example. I
worked many years
in non-tech positions in non-profits. So I
didn't have strong background but I started
as a business intelligence analyst in the non-profits
where I honed my skills. I honed my skills in SQL, in data modeling, and database.
Then I enter into data engineering
at Coursera. So the typical paths I see for data engineering
are coming in either through a system engineering or a
developer side. Those are the typical directions we see. Coming in from a helpdesk,
I
tend to like that a little bit just because you get a
sense of somebody's work ethic from having come in from that
direction. But more often you're going to see somebody
who started as a developer or somebody who started as a
system administrator.