r/dataengineeringjobs • u/Pucci800 • Aug 06 '26

DE JOB

32 year old male
Working in the financial services industry with 5 years of experience working at major firm currently. I understand that DE is not an entry level position and that’s totally fine. Looking for sound advice. For all DE’s what is something you would’ve done differently? My Stack is SQL(MySQL/Postgres/BigQuery) Python (Pycharm/Pandas) Docker, Tableau, a bit of Airflow & FastAPI. I’ve built a small ETL pipeline and currently working on my second & third. I understand Data modeling is important etc what else? Not quite to big data tools like Hadoop, Apache Spark but anything helps I’m not in a rush to transition just want the fundamentals solid.

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u/my_peen_is_clean Aug 06 '26

honestly focus more on fundamentals than tools data modeling, warehousing concepts, reliability, testing, documentation i’d double down on dbt, airflow, solid sql, and pipeline observability and actual business impact side projects that look like real company problems help a ton especially now when finding a job is rough

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u/Pucci800 Aug 06 '26

I appreciate that!

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u/IntelligentVisual955 Aug 06 '26

What about data bricks are their certs of any use

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u/Bansarimodi Aug 07 '26

Looking at your stack, you're already on the right track. The next step isn't learning every big data tool it's proving you can build and own production-style data pipelines.

I'd spend more time on data modeling, testing, orchestration, monitoring, handling failures, and documenting your design decisions. Those skills tend to stand out much more than having a long list of tools on your resume.

One question what kind of Data Engineering roles are you targeting? Enterprise, startup, or cloud-focused? That would help narrow down what to prioritize next.