Unlike data scientists — and inspired by our more mature parent, software engineering — data engineers build tools, infrastructure, frameworks, and services.

Just a comment on this note: At my company, I started changing our job posting titles from “Data Engineer” to “Software Engineer, Data.” “Data Engineer” is such a loose title which seems to change definition from company to company. I found that those “data engineer” postings attract lots of applicants who know enough SQL to be dangerous and programming wise- didn’t know much beyond making a “hello world” or a calculator in a single Python script. Software “best practices” and design principles were no where to be found. Those applicants were more “data analytics engineers” than “developers.”

Once job titles changed to “software” engineering, we got the engineers we were looking for.