Become a data engineer
Data science around 2012 was labeled as the “sexiest job” of the 21st century.
On the date of this article (Sept 2nd, 2024) I am hereby labeling data engineering as the “new sexiest job” of the 21st century.
Data engineering has been on the rise in popularity the past couple of years and I believe it to be still undervalued as a career for most people, especially if you want to work in sports analytics.
In this article, I’ll dive into three reasons for considering a career in data engineering rather than pursuing data science.
Let’s begin!
1. Type of work
When I first was deciding what I wanted to do with my career, I couldn’t really figure out what I liked the most.
Did I want to build frontend applications (I quickly figured out I didn’t) or did I want to work on mobile applications? Maybe I wanted to do some sort of electrical or mechanical engineering.
I soon learned about the world of data and decided I wanted to do something in that realm.
So after a few college classes, I decided I would try to pursue data engineering and have been working in data engineering for the past 4 years now.
Data engineering was appealing because of the work I’d be doing:
Building out databases
Higher focus on writing code
Automating processes for data collection
Working on building out data pipelines and systems
This differs from data science or analysts where they work more on models and analysis and usually will be doing more math and theoretical work which I didn’t like as much.
Data engineering is much closer to traditional software engineering and building actual applications which is what I enjoyed.
2. Competition
When everyone flocked to the sexiest job in the 21st century that left a lot of space open for the other guys.
The truth is that there is much less competition for data engineering jobs especially in sports analytics.
And it makes sense.
Most of the stuff you see on Twitter, YouTube, or blogs is the work of data scientists flaunting their models and analysis while the data engineer doesn’t get a lot of recognition for all the work they did.
It’s a lot harder to show the work of a data engineer than that of an analyst.
But what this means is that there are great opportunities to go out and do data engineering for teams and companies especially because there is a huge shortage of data engineers compared to jobs available as well.
3. Pay
According to Indeed and in personal experience as well, data engineers tend to make more than data scientists.
This can vary from field to field but holds relatively true for most people I know.
Pay isn’t the only reason I do data engineering, but making more money in a job I actually like doing is a win-win for me.
Final thoughts
Data engineering is starting to become a much more popular field but I still believe we are still early.
A lot of data jobs will start to require data engineering skills, especially with the rise of AI as well.
If you want to work in sports, maybe this article will help you see the potential of data engineering and the benefits it can bring.
Until next time,
McKay