I currently work as a data analyst, although much of my role is closer to data engineering. I build and monitor ETL pipelines, create dashboards, and maintain and update queries. I've also built forecasting tools and AI agents. My main gap is that I haven't had much experience building complete applications, so I'm looking for opportunities to do that within my current team or company. I'm learning Django and Java Spring Boot, but I'm unsure what else I should focus on to become a stronger software development engineer. What would be a practical next step, and what criticism or advice would you give?
3 Answers
You can turn much of your existing work into application development by wrapping your forecasting tools or AI workflows in REST APIs. Build a small internal service with Django or Spring Boot, add authentication, validation, logging, tests, and deployment, then let another team consume it. That gives you hands-on experience with backend design and production software instead of only studying frameworks.
Focus less on collecting frameworks and more on shipping small, complete applications. Pick a useful problem, design the data model, write the service, add tests, deploy it, and maintain it based on real feedback. A few finished projects with clear ownership will help your transition more than knowing several frameworks superficially.
A natural transition for you could be data infrastructure engineering. It builds on your ETL and data platform experience while giving you more responsibility for designing reliable systems and data-driven workflows. One useful project area is reverse ETL: identify information in your data warehouse or pipelines that could automatically update systems of record or support other applications. That would let you solve a real business problem while gaining experience integrating services and building production workflows.
That sounds like a realistic direction. How can I make effective use of the tools and resources available to me as I move toward data infrastructure engineering?