Analytics Engineer or Data Engineer: Which One Should You Hire?
Is your business needing some help with its data? Are you unsure of the right type of engineer to hire?
This article explores both analytic engineers and data engineers, helping you to hire the right talent for the job.
The Role: Analytics vs Data
Data Engineer: A data engineer will build the infrastructure that supports the storage and movement of data.
Analytics Engineer: An analytics engineer moves and transforms data from the source so that it can be easily analysed and acted upon by the data analyst.
Whilst analytics engineers focus more on the data itself, data engineers focus more on the processes and infrastructure to deliver the data to make informed business decisions.
Where does each role sit in the business?
Analytics Engineers
Analytics engineers act as a bridge between the business and engineering teams, understanding both technical and business perspectives. This involves communicating with stakeholders and understanding their needs, then translating those needs into data models.
Therefore, analytics engineers build data models with the business at the forefront of their minds, understanding different metrics and how they are used.
Data Engineers
On the other hand, data engineers sit on the engineering team, and rarely interact with the business team. They usually report to the Project Manager.
Their primary role is to collect data into a transactional database.
So, which role should you hire? Well, this depends on the needs of your business.
Scenarios to Hire an Analytics Engineer
Messy Data
Is your data messy and hard to use? This could be anything from incorrect data to no data at all. You’ll need an analytics engineer to step in because they will be able to closely monitor your data to ensure it meets the business's standards.
With this, they can implement testing, and set up data alerts and prevention methods to make sure your data is as expected at all times.
Multiple Platforms
If your data is spread across different platforms, then an analytics engineer will be able to ingest data from all different sources into their data warehouse and act as the business's single source.
On top of this, they’ll assist in documenting your data so that your KPIs are consistent across all areas of the company.
Scenarios to Hire a Data Engineer
Issues Capturing Website Data
If you’re having trouble capturing data from your website, then a data engineer will be able to collect this for you because they tend to focus on the backend processes of websites.
They tend to work with data after it has been captured, moving the data from A to B.
Custom Data Pipeline
If you need to build out a custom data pipeline then data engineers are great because they know tools like Airflow.
Building a custom data pipeline is a technical skill which is more suited to data engineers than it is to analytics engineers.
Choosing The Right Engineer For Your Business
Whilst analytics engineers focus on the data itself, data engineers focus on the data infrastructure of a company’s website and systems.
Understanding the problems your business is trying to solve is essential for hiring the right talent. Organise a discussion with your team to get a better idea of the problems they are facing, and the necessary skills needed to fix the issue.