Data Engineer Duties, Skills & Responsibilities

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When hiring Data Engineers, it’s important to properly describe the job opening with the duties, skills and responsibilities of the role. We’ve compiled a guide to Data Engineer Duties, Skills & Responsibilities using data from actual job postings on Indeed.

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Popular Data Engineer Duties and Skills

Here are some commonly found skills and other specifications in job postings for Data Engineers.

SQL

Definition : Programming language used for interacting with data held in a relational database.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 62.5% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Python

Definition : An interpreted, open-source programming language.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 42.5% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

AWS

Definition : Experience with Amazon Web Services, a platform which provides a wide array of information technology services to individuals or organizations. Services include but are not limited to cloud computing, data storage, database services, business applications, and content delivery.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 28.9% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Java

Definition : A compiled programming language and computing platform. Runs mainly on servers.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 25% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Data warehouse

Definition : Experience working with data warehouses, or repositories of organizational data, and making the data available and usable for analysis.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 24.3% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Spark

Definition : An open-source data processing engine for running analytics.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 23% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Microsoft SQL Server

Definition : Proprietary relational database management system written in C/C++ and developed by Microsoft.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 22.3% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

ETL

Definition : Skills, knowledge, or experience related to ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 18.6% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Master's degree

Definition : Degree awarded to students by universities or colleges at the completion of a post-bachelor's degree course of study. A master's degree is considered more advanced than a bachelor's degree. May be awarded as part of a PhD.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 18.3% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Agile

Definition : Knowledge of or experience managing projects in incremental iterations to continually maximize flexibility and efficiency of a process.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 15.1% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Hadoop

Definition : A framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 14.5% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Oracle

Definition : Database used for online transaction processing and data warehousing developed by Oracle Corporation.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 14.2% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Big data

Definition : Experience using large amounts of data to extract and analyze insights about products, populations, or services.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 13.3% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Analysis skills

Definition : Skill at using mental reasoning or research to gain insight into or solve problems.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 11.4% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Analytics

Definition : Experience or skill with finding and analyzing patterns in data.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 10.5% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Apache Hive

Definition : Data warehouse software.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 10.4% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Informatica

Definition : A suite of data integration and enterprise data management software programs and applications developed by Informatica. Common products include PowerCenter, Informatica Cloud, and Informatica Data Quality.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 7.8% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Shell Scripting

Definition : Scripts that run in a Unix or Windows shell.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 6.1% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Database design

Definition : Experience or skill with designing database systems including determining the data to be stored, classifying it, and identifying interrelationships.
Years of experience most commonly required: 4-5
How common is it? This skill is found in 3% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

Bash

Definition : A command line interpreter and commonly used Unix shell.
Years of experience most commonly required: 2-3
How common is it? This skill is found in 1.6% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.

VBA

Definition : A programming language developed by Microsoft for use within existing Microsoft applications, such as Word and Excel.
Years of experience most commonly required: 3-4
How common is it? This skill is found in 0.4% of Data Engineer job postings on Indeed.