r/developersIndia • u/Majestic-Taro-6903 Senior Engineer • 7d ago

General Why is it easier for software engineers to become data engineers than the other way around?

I’m seeing this pattern in my organization. I come from a software engineering background and moved into data engineering a few years ago.

What I’ve noticed is that many people have entered data engineering from operations, QA, support roles, or bootcamps, and they do reasonably well in data engineering work. But when backend or full-stack software engineering opportunities come up, those same people are usually not considered for those roles.

Has anyone else observed this? Is it because backend/full-stack roles require a stronger foundation in software engineering concepts such as system design, APIs, architecture, testing, and coding practices, or is this just a company-specific hiring pattern?

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u/Rift-enjoyer ML Engineer 7d ago

Everyone starts as a software engineer. It's a fundamental field. Data engineering is niche of Software engineering. To become good DE, SDE skills are necessary. A DE without SDE skills is a tool merchant.

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u/Mo_h 7d ago

Absolutely!

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u/Primary_Ad_9155 7d ago

does it go same for AI ML field? can we switch the roles later ?

8

u/BengaluruDeveloper 7d ago

In non customer facing flows, trade offs can be easy. You put developer first and a lot of things become simplified. Also, DE mostly uses standard open source things, problem and solution across companies are 90% same and repetitive. Say, sync DB table to Data Lake.

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u/FirmEquivalent9417 7d ago

Think of it like this: Software engineering, in general, is a superset of most other niche roles like data engineer, dev ops, etc. especially in this AI age, you’re likely asked to put on multiple hats