A day in the Life of a Data Engineer

Data engineers are some of the most hardworking people on the planet. Highly skilled data engineers are in high demand in various industries ranging from healthcare to tech, finance, etc. Still, they are in short supply. The life of a data engineer revolves around creating programs, meeting with departmental heads and fellow engineers, testing programs, and giving reports. As incredible as it may sound, staring at a screen for hours can be challenging.

We’ve sampled some comments of data analysts, programmers, and data engineers. Here is what a typical day looks like in the life of a data engineer.

Communications/Meeting

For many engineers, their day kicks off with a meeting with colleagues where a run-through of the day's activities is stated. Such meetings may be internal or external, depending on the tasks for the day. In these meetings, these professionals meet to break down the task and formulate the best strategy to get the job done. However, if there is an overlapping job from previous days, they can go on with them without a meeting.

Operations

This involves all processes a data engineered is billed to go through to complete his task. While tasks differ in all aspects, they almost always follow the same process for completion. These processes can be summarized into five stages.

●?????Data Loading: In this stage, the data engineer uses special software such as SQL and ETL to load the data into a sandbox, where analysis commences in earnest.

●?????Data analysis and manipulation: This stage takes a lot of work; the engineer analyzes, labels, writes codes, and performs other necessary tasks on the data. These processes help to put the data in an organized format

●?????Exposing the data: it involves creating a database and structures so that the data fits into the format for machine learning algorithms and data funnels.

●?????Monitoring Data Activity: This is an observation stage; the engineer watches to see how the process performs in the structure it has been placed. In this process, all queries, bugs and finalize all pending issues. This stage may include many trials and errors. However, a professional usually gets a breakthrough eventually.

●?????Publishing: this is the final stage in operations. The data engineer presents the result in a visual and unambiguous format. This final product must conform to the requirements and specifications of the user.

Reporting

Many analysts and data engineers end their day with a concise report of what they have accomplished during the day. The reports include strategies utilized, challenges, solutions, among other things. If any tasks are to be carried over to the next day, notes are taken, and it is dealt with accordingly.