Sometimes consulting feels less like a career choice and more like being handed a mystery box with a sticky note that says, “figure it out.” As a data-migration and data-visualization practitioner, my current company has shoved a few of those boxes my way and I’ve opened most of them. The latest one involved hardware telemetry on a big-data platform called Databricks. I did hear the name before but never had the time to deep-dive.... until now. Fate, or management, doesn’t always ask politely.
My path was not a straight line. I started as a game developer (that backstory deserves its own post how I slowly shifted my gear), then with many changes then landed onto data analysis, and got comfortable getting data, facts, producing dashboards and operational reports. For a while I thought, “Data analyst, that’s the lane!” Then reality and technology started to argue. As data becomes more standardized and AI grows smarter at consuming metadata and domain models, many routine analyst tasks will get automated. That does not mean analysts vanish tomorrow, but the role is evolving, and I do rather shape the steering wheel than get shuffled out of the car.
So now I am stepping up: data engineering. That is the team that designs, builds, and keeps the pipelines and systems humming as tech evolves. It’s less about ad-hoc queries and more about architecting reliable, repeatable data flows. Which, to be honest, suits me: I have already led ETL development and built dashboards for government projects, translating business requirements into end-to-end frameworks and data lineage so stakeholders actually trust the numbers I produced. I have designed and implemented ETL workflows that move data from source systems (we are talking a few hundred tables) into a centralized data warehouse, and I even automated script generation to cut human error when adding new sources and yes, that saved time and dignity in equal measure.
On the visualization side, I have built data models and daily-operational dashboards that help agencies manage operations — not pretty charts for the sake of prettiness, but tools that answer real questions and reduce frantic “where’s the data?” emails. Part of my job has been to mediate between business users and data owners, offering technical guidance while keeping the conversation practical. I also helped the Data Reference Team with an analytical summary dashboard and advised on which data points needed calibration to improve outcomes.
This Databricks project feels like a nudge toward where I want to be. With my background in software, hardware, and governance, the jump to data engineering is not random, it’s a logical upgrade. The real hurdles are brushing up on Python and getting comfortable with Spark, but my programming foundations and discipline for clean code make that more of a sprint than a mountain. Plus, learning Spark feels a bit like learning a new chess opening frustrating at first, then oddly satisfying when the gambits work.
So now here’s the plan: I’ll treat this project as a concentrated course in data engineering — Databricks as the classroom, telemetry as the case study. I’ll keep doing the things that matter (pipeline reliability, data quality, clear lineage, and dashboards that actually inform decisions) while sharpening the new skills I need to own the next level. If data analyst is the reconnaissance, then data engineer is the logistics and infrastructure and I’m ready to build the roads.
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