Top 10 Skills to Learn as a Data Engineer

It's useful for a data engineer to understand the creation of a unified catalog which makes understanding the company data faster and easier. Data auditing can produce alerts if something has gone wrong. And testing and data quality management that can test, monitor, and enforce the quality of data collected.

Data Governance offers training to teach you about data governance.

Project Management and Teamwork

Depending on your company, the data engineering lifecycle can have multiple parts in multiple stages. This is why a basic understanding of project management can help clarify the company's goals, what resources and timescales different parts of the project will take, and monitor progress.

Project management skills are valuable for demonstrating the value of your work to key stakeholders. This is so everyone can be clear on what you're doing and can help if you run into any blockers.

Another skill that can really elevate your role as a data engineer is your teamwork skills. A lot of your role involves interacting with other departments of a business. It could be the marketing team requesting data or making queries on certain datasets or someone within your team who needs assistance.

Teamwork is important because everyone works together to complete a common goal. Some simple things that can help improve your teamwork skills are simply to be more positive, celebrate the success of others around you, and complain less.

Here’s a great course to improve your project management skills on Udemy.

Business Acumen and Communication Skills

Another two things that can help you in your role as a data engineer stand out are business acumen and communication skills.

Business acumen is understanding more about the entire business than just the part you play. Knowing more about how the many different areas of a business are run can help you make decisions in your work.

It could be communicating over video conference, on Slack or email, or in a group. Whatever the medium, communicating your message clearly and concisely is a soft skill that will help you get your point across and let others understand your point of view.

How to Learn and Improve These Data Engineering Skills

Now you know some of the essential data engineering skills you need to know as a data engineer and some of the extra skills that will help you to stand out, make your role easier, and make working with others more troubleless, we will look at how you can learn and improve these skills.

Pursue Relevant Education and Certifications

Nowadays, there is an online course for pretty much anything. Courses can be created by an expert or a company. These are great ways to learn new skills or update existing ones. There are several different platforms where you can learn or improve new skills in data engineering, such as CoRise, Datacamp, or even Udemy.

Some toolings you use as a data engineer provide training so you can learn directly from the company's products you'll be using.

The bonus of going through courses or online training is that most offer certifications to demonstrate that you have completed and understand the training. Snowflake and Google both offer online training with certifications.

Gain Hands-on Experience Through Internships and Projects

One of the best ways to gain experience is to start working on a real project. It could be something you've created yourself, working free for another company, or doing an internship.

Like when you learn to drive, it isn't until you've passed your test that you actually learn to drive. And it's similar when becoming a data engineer, there is so much you can learn from online courses, but the real learning comes when your tackle problems on a real-life project.

Network and Learn From Experienced Data Engineers

Being surrounded by experienced data engineers will really help you speed up your learning process. It could be experienced people on your team or people you've met in communities. Being able to ask for advice when you're stuck or want to know more in-depth knowledge about a certain topic is better than trying to Google the answer.

You get the benefit of knowing they have likely encountered the problem you might be facing and solved it correctly in a real-life business problem.

Stay up-to-date with the Latest Trends and Technologies in the Field

The tech space at the moment is advancing at a rapid rate, so keeping up with the latest news and technology can only benefit you in the long run. Signing up for newsletters, joining communities, and following influencers on social media are great ways to keep on the pulse of any big breakthroughs or new ways or technology that can change how a data engineer operates.

Conclusion

If you've ever wanted to become a data engineer or improve your skills and help yourself stand out, then the above skills will certainly help you.