Transitioning to data engineering

We were joined by Ivonne Carrillo Domínguez, Data Engineering Manager at Bixal. Ivonne is passionate about storytelling and empowering data professionals to jump to the cloud.

Here’s a snippet (55:00) including a few thoughts that both Ivonne and Brittany shared at the hangout with regards to some people being overlooked for data engineering roles based on their experience:

When I am hiring people for a data engineer position – I focus more on the programming skills. If you are a good engineer, you will learn Spark or MapReduce in time. You will end up using certain tools, but in my opinion I wouldn’t say no to someone because of a specific technology. If you find a good candidate, you can teach them or mentor them in specific frameworks.

When I started my first job as a data engineer, I didn’t know about big data or Spark. I had a lot of experience with Java and that’s why they hired me. I think knowing how to program is more important – and that’s the philosophy I use.

I think what they are looking for when they ask about certain tools is if you have experience with concurrency or parallel jobs. Sometimes you need to think a bit differently with distributed computing frameworks, but if you start playing around and reading about it, it will also help give you an opportunity to land a job.

Sometimes when you’re working through a third party like a hiring recruiter, they may not know all of the things that are needed for the role. They’re given the job description and they may not know “I really need someone who has this skill, but if they don’t have this particular one – I’m willing to train on that.” The recruiter might not know that information and this may even change depending on how long the role is open for.

What’s best for the candidate in that case is to get as close to the actual hiring manager as possible. Give them your resume and let them know your experience because sometimes they’ll look at your resume and would absolutely love to give you an interview, where the recruiter might say, “oh, you don’t meet X percent of the job description, therefore I’m not going to pass it on.” This is one of the disconnects between having a third party do that interfacing.