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Transitioning from Cloud to Data Engineering

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Anonymous User at Taro Communitya year ago

Greetings, everyone,

For the past five years, I've been working as a cloud engineer, mainly focusing on major cloud providers. My tasks have revolved around provisioning instances, configuring logs, and handling various operational aspects. However, I must admit that my job's scope is quite limited, and I find it challenging to discover more engaging opportunities. Unfortunately, the team responsible for automation work, although I occasionally collaborate with them, isn't the most receptive or cooperative bunch.

In light of this situation, I've decided to explore my interests further and pursue personal projects that align with my passion for Data Engineering. I've already started working on some of these projects and find the field incredibly fascinating.

While I'm aware that the current job market is unfavorable, I am not actively seeking new opportunities at the moment. Instead, my focus is on building a robust portfolio over the next year or two, with the intention of eventually pursuing a career in Data Engineering.

I believe that having one or two years of experience through personal projects in Data Engineering will improve my chances of securing interviews, as finding data-related opportunities within my current company has proven to be a challenge.

I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter!

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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    a year ago

    I'm all for side projects! Some additional thoughts from me:

    • Can you pick up data engineering working internally? - Work experience is the most powerful experience on a resume, which is why whenever I talk with someone looking to transition from one engineer type to another, I recommend doing the switch within their own company first. It's usually much harder convincing a completely different external company to take a chance on your career pivot. I talk about this more here: "How do I transition from QA into SWE?"
    • 1 to 2 years is a long time - For comparison, I was building, launching, and polishing a new Android side project every 2-3 months at my peak. I know that data engineering and Android are very different, but every tech stack is fairly easy to pick up nowadays given the massively improved tutorial landscape. I think you should start applying to new jobs after 3-6 months and set ambitious targets to ship an impressive side project every 2-3 months like I did. You will never feel completely ready for something as big as a career pivot - Just take the leap of faith and learn from there.

    I recommend this to help with building great side projects: [Taro Top 10] Building Impressive Side Projects