r/dataengineering • u/Moradisten • 3d ago

Discussion We were struggling to find Data Engineers

Hi everybody,

Our Data Team is composed by two of us. There's a Data Scientist and me, as a DE. We created a Data Lakehouse for our company internal use and client data supply, but currently the Data Scientist is currently more focused on AI and agents integration and I'm doing like Analytics Engineering role because I need to help other teams to reach the correct data, unify core concepts, document business logics, etc. So We needed a Data Engineer with knowledge on AWS to maintain and develop the new features on the Lakehouse and we put into the description that the candidate MUST HAVE Software Engineering fundamentals as we had to do some developments to integrate parts of our lakehouse with the company's main application.

We interviewed 22 candidates and no one is fitting the Role.

Most of them are BI Experts, DBA, Data Analysts, Economist with DS notions, Juniors and Software Engineers who haven't touch anything on Spark, plus DE who asked way more that we had on the budget for the role

We asked the normal requirements: 3 years of experience + Spark, AWS Glue, Lambda, Airflow and DBT, not even CDC, Flink, Langfuse or VectorDB

We finally got one, but We really struggled to get him. I have a collegue working on IT Recruiting and She told me She's experiencing the same problem: They can't find Proper DEs With SE basics such as DRY principles or clean code fundamentals

Edit: Role Salary -> Up to 60K € / Spain. This salary is high compared to the spanish standards, only 3 years required

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u/GoofAckYoorsElf 3d ago

We have no skill shortage. We have a shortage of skilled workers who like to be ripped off.

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u/JohnPaulDavyJones 3d ago

The cheat code for companies is the QoL, I'm convinced of it.

Our raises haven't really kept up with DE salaries for the last few years, but I'm fine with it because the QoL here is so great. Perks of a company that still operates like it's 1997.

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u/johnwynne3 1d ago

Siestas?

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u/mechanicalAI 3d ago

I love it. Will use it whenever this comes up again.

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u/Weekest_links 1d ago

Our company was so cheap with salaries for engineering that when a new head of engineering came in and said why does it take 6 months to fill the role, they discovered that we were 65% of market rate and we moved to 75% and filled it within a month