From self-driven cars to automatic tagging in images, data science has come a long way. Data scientists and analysts have become an integral part of any organisation because of the value they add. But, in all honesty, a data scientist is only as good as the data they work with. Most of the organisations today have their data stored in a variety of formats and across numerous platforms. Here comes a need for data engineers!

Data engineers are people who make this data workable for the data scientists and analysts. Data engineers are responsible for building pipelines that transform the heaps of data into a format that is usable for data scientists. They mostly work behind the scenes and hence are devoid of all the glamors of a data scientist/analyst – but mind you, they’re equally (if not more) essential to the functioning of any organisation.

If data scientists are race car drivers, data engineers are race car builders. The former gets the excitement of speeding along a track and thrill of winning in front of an applauding crowd. The latter, on the other hand, gets the joy of tuning engines and creating a powerful, robust machine. A race car builder makes the job of the driver a lot easier (or tougher, depending on the quality of the builder).

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