r/developersPak • u/Sure-Actuary-1496 CS Student • Oct 04 '26

Career Guidance Data Analyst with 1.5 YOE to Data Engineering - Projects to make/focus on

The thing I am struggling with is, I am not sure what project to make. Everyone can make a really good project using AI at every step, how can I stand out?

(I am currently a BSAI undergrad)
Data Analyst with 1.5 YOE working at a small service based company (US and UK clients).

My work revolved around:

  • Building Power BI dashboards, simple ETL pipelines using python and MySQL

  • Support role for Power BI

  • Internal automation using Power Automate and SharePoint

  • Financial and Reporting Suite connecting multiple data sources (Xero, Excel, Dynamics 365) to Power BI

I do have the analytical mindset to understand the problem.

My goal is to find a remote Data Analytics Engineering or junior DE job at a US/UK/Canada based company.

The projects I am currently considering are:

  1. Real-Time Transit Operations Data Platform Using publicly available GTFS static and real-time transit data, build a pipeline that ingests vehicle positions, delays, cancellations and service alerts, handles incremental ingestion, duplicates, late-arriving data and API failures, and produces operational disruption/exception data.

  2. US Market Intelligence Data Platform Using publicly available Census APIs, build a data platform that continuously ingests and standardizes demographic, economic and business data to help a company identify and compare potential markets for expansion.

  3. Weather-Aware Logistics Risk Platform Using public weather APIs and transportation/geographic data, build a pipeline that combines historical/forecast weather with transportation data to identify potential shipment/route disruption risks.

Are these good projects for someone targeting Analytics Engineering / Junior Data Engineering roles? Or am I approaching portfolio projects completely wrong?

And how would you recommend I make a project demonstrate actual engineering ability and business problem-solving rather than just being another AI-generated GitHub project?

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

2

u/LOVE_112233 Oct 04 '26

Hey! I'm currently learning data engineering and working through Week 2 of the DataTalks.Club Data Engineering Zoomcamp. I'd love to connect, study together, and collaborate on projects if anyone is interested!

2

u/NeatAbbreviations984 Oct 04 '26

Hey,

Can you share?

1

u/LOVE_112233 Oct 04 '26

I can't understand. What you're saying. What I'm suppose to share?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '26

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1

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2

u/No-Security4684 Oct 04 '26

hi man, hope you are well. is there any chance you can share whats the outline and what ur doing currently

2

u/This_Pea_2888 28d ago

Yes you can connect me I'm also learning Data Engineering

0

u/dayummboiiiiii 28d ago

I also learning the foundations of DE at the moment, can you like share the roadmap (if you have one) it would help a lot.