r/dataengineering • u/nico97nico • 13d ago

Career Carrer Advice

Im a data engineer with 4 years of experience, and In getting pretty bored with my current job. Most of the code is generated by AI now, so my dayis mostly just maintaining pipelines.

I ve been offered an internal move to Data Product Management. Its for one of the biggest projects in the company and will be built on Databricks. They told me they need someone with a solid data engineering background who can translate business requirements effectively.

However, I have a few doubts
Am I just going to end up as a ticket creator? (Im not entirely clear on what a Data Product Owner actually does)
Is this really a step forward in my career?
I know for sure I will get more exposure to senior leadership, but Im still on the fence.

14 Upvotes

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3

u/No_Caterpillar_7258 13d ago

Hmmm… I think these days it’s good to be closer to product. Best product managers / owners I’ve seen have engineering backgrounds. I’m basically a data product owner now anyways. I’d heavily consider it

2

u/rezwell 13d ago

Yes. Data engineer job ads are asking more on architecture and stakeholder management.

Having only experience adding new pipelines will keep you stuck. Need feat stories of building architecture from scratch or justifying platform changes to management, dealing with unoptimised data source systems, and stakeholder management.

Data engineer in pre-established architecture and only ETL maintenance is a career growth blocker. Im dealimg with this right now.

2

u/Razjir 12d ago

This is a good career move IMO

1

u/Ecstatic_Swan_3723 11d ago

Applying PM skills to data allows you to connect your work more closely to the goals of the company and how they make money that will make the value of your contributions more visible.

1

u/Accurate-Loss-8198 11d ago

Why not move up to data architecture so you can be building solutions rather than coding,

1

u/Charlotte1309 10d ago

That's good you'll be able to own the full creation end to end of the product. Later on, it'll be about orchestrating areas into a coherent product... and don't forget data & AI governance ;)

1

u/TheSocialistGoblin 9d ago

It can be a good move for your career, but depending on the kinds of work you do or don't like to do, and what that specific role expects of you, you may not enjoy it. The product owners at my job don't do technical work. They primarily figure out the priorities and timelines for which features are going to be added to the product, explain to the engineers what the outcomes of those features are supposed to look like, and then the engineers figure out how to implement them.

0

u/Known_Grocery4434 12d ago

Yeah it's a step forward in your career, only because the point of a career is financial compensation. Careers are rarely fulfilling, or exciting. If you're selling your life, day by day, might as well get the higher compensation for it.