Data Engineer: Job Profile and Role

If you have always been fascinated by all things IT, it is natural that you want to pursue a career in this field. Thanks to digitalisation, ever more processes and parts of our daily lives take place online, making jobs in IT a very promising job choice. And of these jobs is the job of a data engineer – not to be confused with the job of a data scientist!

In the following sections, we explore what it takes to become a data engineer in the UK and which competencies help you perform a good job and progress in your career. Naturally, you will also find out where you can find a job and what annual salaries you are typically paid. Our working day insights and concluding tips for thriving hopefully help you to decide whether the job of a data engineer is the right fit for you.

Short Summary

• As a data engineer, you take on the role of data manager and organiser where you are also tasked with database building and maintenance.
• As a data engineer, you monitor databases and function as a troubleshooter if and when needed.
• As a data engineer, you ensure data quality and efficiency which involves so-called data profiling among other things.

Job description

One of your main responsibilities as a data engineer in the UK is to design and build an organisation’s database architecture. That done, your other jobs include data integration from various other sources, such as APIs, and ensure a smooth-running data pipeline which ensures that all data move automatically between different data source systems. It furthermore falls under your job description to check data quality and efficiency daily. This helps you to identify and address potential issues which can then be fixed. This, in turn, contributes to better data performance, which you have to monitor as well.

Responsibilities

• Data Management/Organisation
• Monitoring and Troubleshooting
• ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)
• Data Pipeline Development
• Performance Optimisation
• Data Quality/Governance
• Database Maintenance
• Data Quality/Efficiency
• Data Warehousing
• Data Modeling

Different types of Data Engineers

• ELT Engineer
• Big Data Engineer
• Database Engineer
• Streaming Data Engineer
• Data Warehouse Engineer

Data Engineer vs. Data Scientist

As already stated in the introduction, data engineering and data science are not the same – even though both jobs come with similar entry and training requirements. While you, as a data engineer, are responsible for data management and organisation, and building database pipelines, a data scientist’s main focus is on collecting and analysing/interpreting data. This gives valuable insights into patterns and the chance to identify issues which are then fixed for future avoidance and overall data improvement.  

Salary

As a starting salary in data engineering, you can expect an annual wage of around ￡37,000. Work experience, the necessary training, and taking on more responsibilities can lead to an annual salary of around ￡60,000. How much you earn, however, is not only decided by these factors but also by your employer and your location. Generally, big companies pay higher wages and in a lot of IT jobs, you can expect considerably higher salaries in the south of England. You may not be surprised that some of these are currently found in London and the Greater London Area.

Working Hours

If you want to work in data engineering, you should be happy with relatively long working hours. Typically, your so-called core office hours are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., meaning that you work up to 10 hours a day and 50 hours a week. A little silver lining is that you generally only work from Monday to Friday. Weekend work tends to be the exception and may be asked of you if short-term projects come up or deadlines need to be met. This also applies to evening work which, in peak times, can be part of your working hours.

Note that your working hours depend on your employment type and can be fewer when you work part-time or as a freelancer. We recommend that you give your workload some serious thought since it will likely affect your work-life balance.

Employers

After you have finished your education, you naturally start job hunting. Currently, the best employment chances can be found in the financial, e-commerce, and retail sectors. As with the salaries, you will likely find most jobs in and around London – but do not forget that this area also comes with some of the highest living costs. That said, you can also look for employment in other industries. With the advance of digitalisation, ever more sectors rely on data engineers, such as the healthcare sector (NHS), telecommunications, and even the energy sector. 

Qualifications

Most employers will expect that you have finished your secondary education, even if you approach your career in data engineering through work. This means that GCSEs are the first qualification needed. Please check which pass grades and subjects are mandatory since this can vary depending on both your employer and your educational approach. That said, you can become a data engineer through university, an apprenticeship, or Civil Service training, all of which we look at closely later on. 

Moreover, your education must be accompanied by technical knowledge and skills, including proficiency in programming and coding languages such as JavaScript and Python, ETL, and cloud platforms.

Skills

Since you are working in IT, you may rightly assume that science-related skills will be your most important asset. Although this, to a certain extent, is true, it does not mean that you should pay careful attention to the competencies your employer expects of you. After all, your data engineer skill set might include some competencies you did not expect – and which we will look at in this section.

Rational Thinking 

Rational thinking is a competency that is made up of various other skills. It includes problem-solving skills as well as critical and analytical thinking – all aspects that are needed to do an excellent job in data engineering. With rational thinking, you can identify patterns and recognise potential flaws. It furthermore enables you to make decisions that are based on facts (that is, data) and not emotions. This, in turn, contributes to eliminating and avoiding future mistakes as well as an overall higher efficiency in data-related work processes.

Communication Skills

Excellent written and verbal skills are needed if you want to perform well and excel in your data engineer job. For one, you need to communicate with other data-related departments to define daily tasks and strategies that need planning and implementation. You also need to be able to communicate complex scenarios which includes the ability to break down said scenarios into an easy-to-understand way. Your written communication not only includes writing emails and reports but it is also needed for ELT tasks where you are in charge of scripting.

Business Management Knowledge

Typically, this competency is more closely connected to management jobs but should also be a part of your skill portfolio. To design, organise, and monitor an organisation’s data, you first need to understand how the company works, aka, how it is managed and how it operates. These valuable insights enable you to come up with a bespoke data architecture that meets all the company’s needs.

Career Path

Education, training, passion, and commitment can propel you to the top in data engineering. Of course, you first have to excel in your entry-level position which gives you all the insights and knowledge needed to progress to more senior roles. Equally, you will benefit from specialising, for example, in AI-related software and technologies. This field is getting more important by the second and should therefore be something you look into. Your knowledge and qualifications also enable you to go into consultancy work if freelance/self-employment is an interesting career option for you.

Educational Background

Typically, you become a data engineer in the UK through undertaking an undergraduate degree or completing an apprenticeship. Both approaches have their advantages which also impress future employers. 

While a BSc in computer science, information technology, or data engineering shows your research and analytical skills as well as your commitment to continuous learning, a data engineer apprenticeship comes with practical knowledge. Here, you have various options, including the Cambridge Spark data engineer apprenticeship or – if you want to specialise – an artificial intelligence (AI) data specialist level 7 professional apprenticeship. 

Taking part in a Civil Service fast stream scheme can be another way to become a data engineer. The relevant courses take three years to complete and offer you your first salary. As with most IT-related jobs in the UK, you can furthermore attend boot camps. Some of the most prestigious ones are offered by Northcoders and Le Wagon. 

Entry Level

Entry-level positions in data engineering are typically your first job in this profession after you have finished your education. Equally, you can do an internship while still being trained in data engineering. This has several advantages, including figuring out if the job of a data engineer is actually the right fit for you and, if so, getting your foot in the door of a potential future employer. Both entry-level jobs and internships should be completed with the help of a more senior colleague who can show you the ropes of the profession.

Continuous Learning

Whether you have completed an undergraduate degree or an apprenticeship: you know that learning is a big part of your personal success story and should play a major role in the course of your career. While some of the needed knowledge can come from scientific publications, some of it is connected to further training and qualifications. 

As a data engineer, you should look into professional certifications, such as becoming a Google Cloud certified professional data engineer, or a certified data management professional (CDMP) which is offered by DAMA UK. You can complete your training online by attending webinars. We strongly recommend you invest time and money in these and further certifications since they enhance your credibility and, therefore, your career prospects.

A Day in the Life of a Data Engineer

After we have “bamboozled” your brain with lots of hard facts concerning the job of a data engineer in the UK, we will now tell you how to apply your qualifications and skills practically. In this section, we take a look at three typical daily tasks in the life of a data engineer.

Data Pipeline Maintenance

As you have already learned, one of your job’s responsibilities is data pipeline development. You are also responsible for data pipeline maintenance – if nothing else because you are the expert who knows everything about it. You need to ensure that the respective pipeline runs smoothly since hitches will most likely affect all data-related work processes and flows. If you encounter any issues, your maintenance work naturally includes analysing problems and coming up with quick and effective solutions.

Coding and Development

Your excellent writing skills play an important role in this daily task where you spend considerable time on coding. To succeed, you need to have an in-depth knowledge of the relevant coding and programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript, and Scala. They help and enable you to both build and manage ETL processes and also contribute to effective data pipelines, our task number 1.

Collaboration

Collaboration with other departments, for example, data scientists and software engineers, takes up some more of your daily working hours. Typically, these meetings are conducted at the start of the day but can equally happen during the day. Here, you discuss ongoing and future projects, developments, changes, and potential updates and adjustments to running data processes. These collaboration meetings also help delegate daily tasks and foster higher performance success since you benefit from your colleagues’ insights and expertise. 

Tips for Thriving as a Data Engineer

Last, but not least, we give you three more tips for thriving as a data engineer in the UK. These tips not only address your professional but also your personal development. The latter is equally important to ensure a healthy work-life balance. So, without much further ado, the following are the things that will help you excel:

• Big data technologies
• Data governance
• Work-life balance

Big Data Technologies

The name already reveals the nature of this particular data “beast”. Big data means both large and extremely complex data sets which today make up the setup of a lot of organisations. Your basic data engineering knowledge and skills will not suffice to manage and organise big data. To keep on top of it – in fact, even getting to the top of the big data mountain – requires a high proficiency in the relevant technologies. These can range from Spark and Kafka to HBase and Hadoop. Investing time and effort into these technologies helps you to thrive as a data engineer in the UK and gives you valuable knowledge that can set you apart from your colleagues (and potential “opponents” when it comes to promotions).

Data Governance

No sector in the UK functions without a set of regulations and rules which is why you need to be both aware and knowledgeable in the relevant regulations for data governance in data engineering. This must include your GDPR knowledge and training (general data protection regulation) and should stretch to international regulations and litigation preparedness. You can get the necessary information at the Royal Society or IT governance, for example. 

Work-Life Balance

Working on your work-life balance should also be a part of your development and help you thrive in data engineering. Your job cannot only involve long working days but also a lot of pressure and sometimes monotonous tasks that require all your attention. Needless to say, you will be exhausted when you clock off. Switching off from your working day and spending time on recreational pastimes is important if you want to avoid burnout and dwindling work performance. We therefore suggest you spend some time figuring out what best helps you to wind down after a long and strenuous working day.

Frequently Asked Questions