Member-only story
9 Real Challenges That Data Engineers Face
How do I even become a data engineer?
As the data industry evolves with new technology, so do data engineering challenges. What can new engineers expect?
As data engineers, you play vital roles in your field by collecting and analyzing data. But necessary data engineer skills today aren’t the same as they were in years past, and the role is seeing some serious growing pains. Let’s focus on some challenges for data engineers.
Data Engineers Must Learn on Their Feet
One of the biggest challenges, and the root of many others, is that data engineering is a relatively new and dynamic discipline. While it has its origins in database maintenance and business intelligence, it’s taken on a life of its own in recent years. You won’t find many university courses on the subject, nor will you expect to find a “data engineering boot camp” any time soon. That means engineers learn the bulk of their best practices on the job.
Further complicating things is that the data engineering field deviated from its original path. Engineers of the past focused more on creating data pipelines and collecting data into warehouses. Now the work is far more complicated, with added responsibilities in data analytics and building algorithms. And the data that engineers work with is astronomically larger than in the past (but more on that later.)
Data engineering is a true hybrid role born from an explosion of data and technological advancement. These advancements are industry-changing, and that change is still ongoing. We can expect the data engineering role to keep changing with it, and where it ultimately ends up remains to be seen.
Too Much Data to Handle
The header is a bit of hyperbole, but the term “Big Data” is not. Data engineers today must work with more data than ever before, and there’s no sign of a plateau. While the massive amounts of data are a boon to the industry, data grows at a rate faster than most can expect to wrangle it, which leads to a couple of problems.
Poor Performance
All that information is a strain on the most advanced machines. Reports and models slow…
