No Experience? Here's How to Break Into Data Engineering
Hey y'all, data guy here. Um, and in response to some comments I've been seeing across my videos around, you know, hey, I want to break into data engineering, you know, I want to be a data engineer and, you know, you develop all these skills that might be relevant to data engineering and, you know, I have videos out there that'll tell you, hey, you know, develop Python and SQL skills and that's already known, but as a new graduate, if you don't have any job experience industry, it's pretty
hard these days to get a job immediately as a data engineer. Um, you know, obviously if you're an exceptional talent and more importantly a really good interviewer, there's a chance, but typically you're going to have to find another way into the data engineering industry. um you know something like a data analyst is one example of these career paths and I'm going to explore a few different career paths that you can use to you know really work think of as guidelines for how you can get yourself
get into data engineering as a new graduate with no data engineering job experience but you know those requisite skills in the data space and you know that kind of general understanding what jobs can you pursue right now have a better chance of landing that'll set you up for for a data engineering job a little bit down the road. So without further ado, let's get into it. Uh if you like these videos, please like, subscribe, consider joining my Patreon. But let's start out with our first type.
Best Entry-Level Jobs That Lead to Data Engineering
Uh the first job that typically, you know, will lead into a data engineering position, which is the data analyst role. Um and this is typically a pretty low barrier to entry role. Uh there's a lot of entry level positions historically very available. Um, but these days, you know, you you will definitely need to be very AI enabled to get one of these jobs because, you know, AI is replacing a lot of those kind of grunt work, manual functions that, you know, used to be really good uh breaking endpoints in the industry. You know,
things like data cleaning, you know, now doesn't necessarily need to be done by a human. Um, but generally it's an easy area to get into because it doesn't really require a ton of knowledge around technical infrastructure, right? you know here you're going to be doing more things like you know writing SQL queries for you know reporting Python scripts for you know creating dashboards visualizations analyzing data to you know answer kind of business questions and basic data cleaning and preparation
um which are really great skills and really great responsibilities for developing you know more advanced SQL capabilities more understanding of how data uh in understand or relates to data engineering um and you know actually you know how it's providing value to the business. Um, and you know, really exposing you to the first layer of, you know, data visualization tools, basic scripting, data quality assessment, and you're going to also need to be interacting with data engineers. Um, a lot of these skills are, you know,
things that, hey, when you're a data engineer, you're on the other side, you're providing this data to the data analysts. Um, so, you know, you understand, hey, this is what data analysts want, which is why it's, you know, really good entry space in the field because, hey, you go from data analyst, you say, hey, I need a data engineer that can build me these pipelines. Why don't I go build it myself? Um and you know this is a great opportunity to learn a lot of these skills that you will then you know take
The Fastest Way to Become a Data Engineer in 2026
further as a data engineer and then this job also especially you know if you're at a larger organization gives you a lot of opportunities to kind of reach out and volunteer for more of those kind of data pipeline automation projects that I just described you know getting involved in actually you know data infrastructure discussions you can always go ask questions and figure out hey what do you guys use in the back end are there any roles in the data engineering team um and also So learn the stack that they're
using behind the scenes to provide you that data. You know, things like DBT, Airflow, um you know, learning containerization, you know, if you want to maybe run small web apps or containerize your own dashboards, right? um kind of some of those beginner level you know CI/CD DevOps practices um are also a really good opportunity to you know implement some kind of best practices from you know the big leagues down in this role to prove hey I'm ready to make that jump to a data engineer. So that's one option. Now the next option I
want to talk about is going from software engineer to data engineer. Um, and this is another really common option because, you know, as a software engineer, you have a really strong programming foundation, you're familiar with development best practices, you're very familiar with how to write and code and maintain uh your own, you know, code and containerize it, run it in production settings, which are a lot of the same things you're doing as a data engineer just for different use cases,
right? Um and data engineering you know is effectively a subset of software engineering um and inherits a lot of its best practices and you know structure from what software engineers do. Um and here you know a lot of the key responsibilities you have as a software engineer you know things li
ke application development API creation integration database design optimization you
know system architecture understanding how different you know tools and systems and containers relate to each other. Um and you know obviously
the skills you develop in that kind of role where you're you know doing a lot of programming designing those systems you have to follow DevOps practices if especially if you're at any kind of large company um database management understanding how you know to safely and you know responsibly and efficiently store data um develop APIs and work with APIs and here you know you take those skills and they're a lot of the same things you're doing as a data engineer right and so really the way to
From Data Analyst to Data Engineer: Complete Roadmap
Transition from a software engineer to a data engineer is you know focusing more on understanding data processing frameworks and focusing on more data related products, more data intensive projects um and you know getting to understand the data you know data warehouse concepts you know going deeper a layer in the backend than you might have you know previously gone to understand hey what's really happening in these backend systems if that's something that truly excites you um and then going into those systems um and you
know saying hey I'm going to figure out how to optimize this I'm going to figure out how to optimize something like a query um you know so because that's something you're be doing a lot of as a data engineer um and then al also the distributed systems knowledge from you know doing software deployment and production is also very applicable um for data engineering um so a lot of really you know crosslicable skills and a lot of easy transition opportunities typically from this kind of role now the
next kind of data career path I want to talk about is a little bit lesser known and you know something that especially nowadays is data admins are you know kind going out of industry is it's a bit harder to get a new but it's also something where if you're already a data admin transitioning into a data engineering role or you know database reliability engineer these are really great roles um for you know taking that deep database knowledge understanding a data storage and performance um and then
you know taking that to hey you know I'm going to orchestrate this and you know learn how systems interact with the databases that I've been managing it and then learn how to orchestrate those systems because you know so much around how databases work, you're able to work with them really efficiently, right? And you know, a lot of those key responsibilities of database performance optimization, you know, setting backup recovery procedures, implementing secure pipelines uh for data and you know,
secure storage of data as well. Um, and you know, capacity planning and the distributed systems that go along with managing modern data warehouses are really crossable to data engineering. And you'll also, you know, have a lot of those skills ready to go and, you know, for when you want to transition over there and you're still going to use them, right? You know, that deep, you're going to have deep SQL knowledge. That's what you're doing as a data engineer. Um, you know, if you're storing data or,
you know, managing data pipelines at a large enterprise, you need to be doing those really high performance and really high security, right? Um and so you know some good ways to transition from you know kind of hey purely backend into the data engineer more pipelines area is you know learning program more you know data engineering focused programming languages like Python uh Java understanding more big data technologies and how data gets processed since that's typically just something you might not
have a lot of exposure to um is you know how something like spark works um also cloud platform experience making sure you know how modern cloud platforming plum terms work, you know, the different tools in a modern cloud stack u because you'll you'll need to know that for any company these days. Um and then obviously workflow orchestration tools, you know, studying data pipeline concepts and you know not only understanding how you know data is stored but also how data gets transformed and manipulated and used um
4 Proven Career Paths to Become a Data Engineer
outside the context of just a database. Now the final kind of career transition path I want to talk about is another probably lesser known one and one you might not instinctively think about but it's actually going from DevOps engineer to data engineer and that's because there is really a lot of kind of cross-co compatibility and you know usage of the same tools between devops and data ops um you know both are very infrastructure and automation focused they both require extensive cloud experience um you know as a devops
engineer you're going to have a lot of responsibility on hey how do you automate the deployment and management of infrastructure building CI/CD pipelines um you know cloud platform management and also monitoring and learning on all those different systems um and you know the skills you develop there hey you know you are going to be doing learning how to do things like infrastructure as code orchestrating containers um just how you' be orchestrating workflows as a data engineer um you know doing things like
automation scripting those are all really relevant skills in data engineering as well um and so you know really great way to transition from the DevOps side of it to more data ops is you know learning hey get out the missing pieces like data processing technologies how to manage and you know build pipelines around those and understanding you know data warehousing concepts right how data gets stored that's you know typically a blind spot for a devops engineer um and then understanding you know hey how what are
the typical ETL ELT patterns relating to you know how you were building you know containerization workflows right and container orchestration you're just orchestrating data Now um and you know just get familiar with data specific tools and you know learning things like SQL and data modeling will really help you close that gap and make that transition where you know you have a lot of the skills you just got to add a little bit more of the data piece. Um so those are just a few uh different career
paths I wanted to talk about for you know how you get from hey someone who's on the DevOps side of thing or on side of things or software engineering or you know you're a new grad and you want to break into data engineering choose one of these paths. if you can't get a job in data engineering and within two years you should be able to transition into a more data engineering focused role if that's what you still want to do. Maybe you'll fall in love with one of these instead.
Full Guide follow these steps:
How to Become a Data Engineer Without Experience in 2026
4 Proven Career Paths to Become a Data Engineer
No Experience? Here's How to Break Into Data Engineering
From Data Analyst to Data Engineer: Complete Roadmap
Best Entry-Level Jobs That Lead to Data Engineering
How New Graduates Can Start a Career in Data Engineering
Data Engineering Career Guide: Skills, Jobs & Growth Path
The Fastest Way to Become a Data Engineer in 2026
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