Data Engineer Training

Data Engineering: What it is and why it matters

A Data Engineer takes a range of data sources and determines the most efficient way to combine and manipulate these. They use their data expertise to design and create relevant, fit for purpose data systems for a host of business applications.

The role requires a blend of technical, business and interpersonal skills to understand the business requirements, identify the relevant data sources, and design innovative solutions.

The demand for Data Engineers is exploding - IT Jobs Watch states that the year-on-year “rank change” in UK demand for data engineers is +85. More details.

The Mana Search UK Data Analytics Salary report states: “Data scientists, engineers and analytics professionals are in high demand.  Overall, more than half of UK data jobs are located in London. Alongside London, there are concentrations of data roles in larger cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Oxford and Cambridge.  Data engineers have the highest average salary across all levels, followed closely by data scientists: More details.

According to Hired’s 2022 State of Software Engineering report, Data Engineer is the fourth most “in demand” role.

According to a new UK report by global recruitment consultancy Robert Walters and data analytics firm Vacancysoft, Data Engineers are the second-most sought after IT data specialists.  Fourth in 2019 for most vacancies within the broader IT data specialists category, the Data Engineering function is now in second place. Its share of total hiring has grown 10 percentage points to now account for 19% of all specialist hiring — jumping above jobs for data scientists and data managers: Download Report.

There's not a definitive job description when it comes to a data engineer role, but here are a few things you'll likely be doing:

• Collecting large amounts of unruly data and transforming it into a more usable format.
• Looking for order and patterns in data, undertaking data quality, assurance and validation.
• Adhering to best practices in data governance and data security
• Interpreting requirements from other areas of the business. 
• Solving business-related problems using innovative data-driven techniques.
• Working with a variety of software packages and programming languages, such as SAS, R and Python.
• Communicating and collaborating with both IT and business.

The Data Engineer is the foundation of successful analytics, ensuring data is highly usable when it reaches data scientists.

SAS courses teach you to build scalable data pipelines to deliver trusted, high-quality insights while ensuring compliance and governance of analytic assets.

SAS Data Engineering Learning Subscription
These data engineering courses are designed for programmers, data engineers, data integration developers, and data quality stewards using SAS for their data engineering solution.
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SAS 9 Data Management Learning Subscription
For programmers, data engineers, data integration developers, and data quality stewards using SAS®9 for their data management solution.
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You will learn how to:

• Apply data ethics and privacy guidelines to maintain data security.
• Use a data-driven approach to problem solving.
• Perform data discovery and analysis 
• Explore and validate data.
• Access and combine data from multiple sources including SAS, Microsoft Excel, and text data.
• Prepare data by sub-setting rows and computing new columns using data manipulation techniques.
• Determine the most efficient programming techniques to process large volumes of data.
• Load data files into SAS Cloud Analytic Services.

The Data Engineer learning pathway is ideally suited for anyone with any of the following qualifications:

• GCSE Maths (or equivalent)
• A Level
• NVQ level 3
• GNVQ Advanced
• Key skills level 3
• QCF level 3
• RQF level 3
• Certificate of Higher Education
• Diploma of Higher Education
• Foundation degree