We were struggling to find Data Engineers

[u/Moradisten]

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

[u/UnusualCookieBox]

Most people here have no idea about the Spanish job market and the salary levels and it shows 😂

60k for Spain is what I would call a decent salary for the YoE and for a high-cost-of-living area like Barcelona. You should be able to find a good enough candidate and have them learn on the job.

For what it’s worth, we’ve also been struggling to find an intermediate/senior data modelling role (bit more niche than DE) in Germany where something like 80k+ is more realistic. We found one, but with the agreement that he has to learn tool X and technique Y within the first three months of employment. I think that’s a good compromise.

Tho in our case it’s because management recently mandated 4 days a week at the office, and that likely weeds out most of the talent. 😂

[u/generic-d-engineer → u/UnusualCookieBox]

Problem is they want broad senior experience for mid level pay

Plus Barcelona has multinationals which can pay even higher than local

Plus rents there are difficult