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 1659 Data Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 43254 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 2016:

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 $122,336.

State

The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $116,913.

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 $106,022.

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	58.96%
Master's Degree	23.21%
Doctoral Degree	3.32%
Other	2.11%

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	11.64%
3 to 5 years	53.14%
6 to 8 years	22.64%
9+ years	12.59%

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 (34.81%)
Problem Solving (28.03%)
Management (22.35%)
Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (21.19%)
Operations (14.41%)
Leadership (14.19%)
Innovation (13.98%)
Information Technology (11.03%)
Mentorship (10.31%)
Detail Oriented (9.79%)

Defining Skills

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

Informatica (8.06%)
Data Lakes (16.55%)
Azure Data Factory (12.19%)
Apache Airflow (16.33%)
Agile Methodology (28.14%)
Computer Science (45.38%)
Java (Programming Language) (18.75%)
Automation (22.23%)
Data Analysis (27.93%)
Amazon Web Services (39.33%)
Data Engineering (91.87%)
Microsoft Azure (32.43%)
Big Data (27.95%)
Data Quality (29.44%)
Data Warehousing (41.51%)
Extract Transform Load (ETL) (56.15%)
Data Infrastructure (11.45%)
Data Modeling (39.94%)
Apache Hadoop (16.23%)
Python (Programming Language) (68.15%)
Apache Hive (9.36%)
Scalability (37.71%)
Machine Learning (20.52%)
SQL (Programming Language) (70.32%)
Scala (Programming Language) (17.63%)
Data Pipelines (51.18%)
PySpark (12.51%)
Databricks (20.18%)
Data Ingestion (11.17%)
Apache Spark (32.12%)
Amazon Redshift (15.48%)

Necessary Skills

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

Workflow Management (19.69%)
Git (Version Control System) (10.2%)
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (11.13%)
Business Intelligence (21.35%)
Application Programming Interface (API) (17.83%)
Artificial Intelligence (10.42%)
Data Processing (17.38%)
Software Development (10.67%)
Algorithms (5.59%)
Business Requirements (14.16%)
Data Security (9.87%)
Amazon S3 (2.7%)
Data Integrity (8.53%)
Data Visualization (13.3%)
Dashboard (12.01%)
Code Review (6.49%)
DevOps (11.7%)
Data Management (16.51%)
Relational Databases (13.02%)
Version Control (9.02%)
Linux (5.65%)
MySQL (7.11%)
Information Systems (9.02%)
Data Governance (19.51%)
Data Integration (17.78%)
Data Structures (8.35%)
R (Programming Language) (8.62%)
Data Architecture (14.88%)
Project Management (8.38%)
PostgreSQL (10.42%)
NoSQL (15.06%)
Power BI (16.44%)
Scrum (Software Development) (7.68%)
Scripting (15.03%)
Software Engineering (13.01%)
Jenkins (5.77%)
Statistics (7.28%)
Apache Kafka (17.15%)
Tableau (Business Intelligence Software) (14.77%)
Advanced Analytics (4.71%)
Kubernetes (7.8%)
Data Storage (8.78%)
CI/CD (17.22%)
Docker (Software) (7.25%)
Terraform (6.83%)
Data Science (20.1%)
Programming Languages (12.92%)

Distinguishing Skills

A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.

Azure Data Lake (4.24%)
Azure Databricks (4.84%)
AWS Kinesis (4.1%)
AWS Glue (5.23%)
Google BigQuery (6.98%)
Data Transformation (7.67%)
Distributed Data Store (3.48%)
Data Store (5.73%)
Query Optimization (2.63%)
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) (6.64%)
Talend (3.22%)
Real Time Data (6.11%)
Unstructured Data (7.79%)
Synapse Citrix (2.98%)
Transact-SQL (3.37%)
DataOps (3.67%)
Azure Synapse Analytics (4.83%)

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.

Informatica (9.17%)
AWS Kinesis (4.66%)
Java (Programming Language) (21.32%)
Agile Methodology (32%)
Computer Science (51.61%)
Data Infrastructure (13.02%)
Data Store (6.51%)
Distributed Data Store (3.96%)
Python (Programming Language) (77.5%)
Query Optimization (2.99%)
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) (7.55%)
Talend (3.67%)
Amazon Redshift (17.6%)

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
Manager/Data Engineer
Azure Engineer
Big Data Engineer
Analytics Engineer
Principal Engineer
Staff Data Engineer
Data Integration 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

Amazon (798)
Insight Global (667)
Robert Half (466)
Ford (425)
Motion Recruitment (425)
Randstad (417)
Kforce (349)
Capital One (342)
Eliassen Group (335)
Cai (308)

North Carolina

Randstad (59)
The Hartford (41)
Motion Recruitment (30)
Insight Global (28)
Infosys (27)
Kforce (22)
Truist Financial (20)
Strategic Staffing Solutions (20)
ManpowerGroup (20)
Robert Half (20)

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.

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