Jobs Report: 08/28/24

Battle of the Engineers: Data v. Software

This week we’re adding data engineering roles into the mix due to popular demand. Its a good opportunity to see if there is a measurable difference between the two roles.

Across the board, data engineer roles tend to require the same skills: ETL, Databricks, Scala, dbt, Spark, and Redshift. If you learn these skills you’ll qualify for 70-90% of the data engineering roles.

Data scientist roles tend to have skill requirements that are more business focused. You’ll see a lot of tableau, R, and SQL. The de-facto programming language is Python for all roles in this domain. AWS is the dominant cloud platform required. I see requirements for advanced degrees here more than in other functions.

In contrast, software engineer skill requirements tend to be wide and varied. You’ll even have software engineers, with a focus on data engineering or machine learning. On top of need to know data skills you’ll need to know data structures and algorithms.

Therefore software engineer roles are harder to prepare for than data roles. In terms of salary, software engineer roles tend to be higher but not by a lot. If you want to be strategic, maybe you’ll have an easier time landing a role as a data engineer because the skillsets are narrower.

What do you think?

Big Baller of the week

Our big baller is a WHALE offering $1,500,000!

Yes! One company is offering 1.5 million dollars in total compensation for a software engineering manager role. Man, what a jackpot. The company is an asset management firm. No surprise there as Wall Street continually pays top dollar especially when it comes to bonuses.

The downside is its in Westport, CT. But for 1.5M, I’ll become the mayor of Westport if I need too. Shoot, go get that paper my friend!!!