Data Engineer

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

A Data Engineer designs, builds and manages the information or big data infrastructure. Develops the architecture that helps analyze and process data in the way the organization needs it. Makes sure those systems are performing smoothly.

Job Outlook

There were 1698 Data Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 42902 in the United States.

In combination with other careers in the Data Engineer industry, which includes the Data Engineer career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2015:

Salary

Many new Data Engineer jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.

National

The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $111,638.

State

The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $108,029.

Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for Data Engineer postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $97,583.

Education and Experience

Posted Data Engineer jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.

Education Level	Percentage
Associate's Degree	0%
Bachelor's Degree	59.24%
Master's Degree	20.79%
Doctoral Degree	3.24%
Other	2.58%

Posted Data Engineer jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Years of Experience	Percentage
0 to 2 years	13.27%
3 to 5 years	52.16%
6 to 8 years	22.37%
9+ years	12.2%

Skills

Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills Data Engineer positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.

Baseline Skills

A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.

Communication (33.05%)
Problem Solving (23.52%)
Management (21.62%)
Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (18.13%)
Operations (15.19%)
Leadership (13.25%)
Innovation (11.73%)
Research (10.02%)
Writing (10.02%)
Information Technology (9.99%)

Defining Skills

A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.

Azure Data Factory (10.45%)
Informatica (7.94%)
Apache Airflow (12.99%)
Amazon Web Services (38.6%)
Java (Programming Language) (22.37%)
Data Lakes (15.39%)
Agile Methodology (28.23%)
Microsoft Azure (29.87%)
Big Data (26.88%)
Apache Hive (9.83%)
Data Integration (15.77%)
Python (Programming Language) (63.16%)
Extract Transform Load (ETL) (48.98%)
Data Modeling (34.18%)
Data Engineering (82.77%)
Data Quality (24.02%)
Computer Science (43.36%)
Data Architecture (12.55%)
Data Warehousing (37.46%)
Data Analysis (26.98%)
Apache Hadoop (16.11%)
Machine Learning (19.19%)
Scalability (27.42%)
Data Infrastructure (8.27%)
Synapse Citrix (6.51%)
Data Ingestion (8.16%)
SQL (Programming Language) (65.05%)
Pyspark (10.26%)
Apache Kafka (15.19%)
Data Pipelines (38.92%)
Amazon Redshift (13.28%)
Apache Spark (29.27%)
Scala (Programming Language) (17.34%)
Real Time Data (5.2%)
Databricks (14.21%)

Necessary Skills

A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.

Workflow Management (14.11%)
Git (Version Control System) (10.45%)
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (8.8%)
Data Processing (12.46%)
Business Process (5.24%)
Automation (21.26%)
Artificial Intelligence (8.75%)
Amazon S3 (11.14%)
Algorithms (6.26%)
Software Development (12.48%)
Application Programming Interface (API) (16.54%)
Business Intelligence (18.78%)
Dashboard (11.14%)
Business Requirements (12.51%)
Linux (8.17%)
Data Governance (13.82%)
Unix (6.29%)
Data Visualization (11.13%)
Information Systems (7.86%)
Data Management (15.97%)
Relational Databases (13.11%)
R (Programming Language) (8.77%)
Data Security (7.13%)
Data Structures (8.67%)
Finance (4.3%)
DevOps (11.58%)
Version Control (7.39%)
PostgreSQL (9.74%)
MongoDB (6.44%)
MySQL (7.75%)
Code Review (6.21%)
Relational Database Management Systems (5.85%)
NoSQL (14.45%)
Software Engineering (13.83%)
Scrum (Software Development) (8.35%)
Project Management (8.65%)
Microsoft SQL Servers (7.46%)
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) (7.87%)
Programming Languages (11.63%)
Power BI (14.48%)
CI/CD (15.92%)
Data Science (18.76%)
Tableau (Business Intelligence Software) (14.86%)
Jenkins (6.49%)
Kubernetes (7.62%)
Advanced Analytics (3.96%)
Docker (Software) (7.64%)
Microservices (5.4%)
Scripting (14.2%)
Terraform (5.9%)

Distinguishing Skills

A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.

AWS Kinesis (3.31%)
Google Cloud Dataproc (1.3%)
Azure Data Lake (3.06%)
AWS Glue (3.38%)
Azure Databricks (3.79%)
Data Transformation (6.82%)
BigQuery (5.01%)
Distributed Data Store (3.37%)
MapReduce (2.63%)
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) (2.67%)
Unstructured Data (6.95%)
Data Storage (6.88%)
Transact-SQL (4.4%)
Apache Cassandra (4.59%)

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.

Azure Data Lake (3.89%)
Apache Airflow (16.54%)
AWS Glue (4.31%)
Azure Databricks (4.83%)
Agile Methodology (35.92%)
BigQuery (6.38%)
Data Infrastructure (10.53%)
Data Modeling (43.5%)
Apache Hadoop (20.5%)
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) (3.39%)
MapReduce (3.35%)
Scala (Programming Language) (22.07%)
Data Storage (8.76%)
Pyspark (13.05%)
Real Time Data (6.62%)
Apache Kafka (19.34%)
Databricks (18.08%)
Data Pipelines (49.53%)

Alternative Job Titles

Sometimes employers post jobs with Data Engineer skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:

Lead Data Engineer
Database Engineer
Big Data Engineer
Azure Engineer
Principal Engineer
Analytics Engineer
Staff Data Engineer
Data Engineer/Consultant
Master Data Engineer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.

Common Employers

Here are the employers that have posted the most Data Engineer jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.

United States

Randstad (564)
Capital One (532)
Kforce (470)
Ford (446)
Humana (435)
Guidehouse (415)
Insight Global (404)
Larsen & Toubro (380)
Motion Recruitment (357)
Deloitte (336)

North Carolina

Randstad (102)
MetLife (35)
Fidelity Investments (32)
Eliassen Group (31)
Cognizant Technology Solutions (28)
Wells Fargo (28)
ManpowerGroup (28)
Robert Half (27)
Charlotte, Nc (24)
Larsen & Toubro (22)

NC State Programs Relevant to this Career

If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!

All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.

Information Technology