Topic:
Learn how to write professional ETL pipelines using best practices in Python and Data Engineering.
What you'll learn:
How to write professional ETL…
An ETL developer is a role responsible for designing, building, managing and maintaining ETL processes. Here’s what to know about an ETL developer’s needed skills, salary and how to become one.
An ETL developer creates and manages the entire sequence of activities within the three buckets of ETL and more, as we will dive into below.
ETL developers work across industries though the role is more popular within technologically-focused organizations. Primary examples of these businesses are software companies such as the ones that make up big tech (Meta, Google, Microsoft), wider SaaS firms and especially companies that rely on heavy investments in cloud technologies (AWS).
ETL stands for extract, transform and load. Any business or organization managing an ETL process breaks the three steps into the following activities:
The overall range of responsibilities varies from heavy involvement in technical development to wider cross-functional communication and collaboration efforts.
An ETL developer normally works within a company’s data analytics or software engineering department. ETL developers also work in collaboration with internal business users to make sure the ETL processes they develop fit the needs of the company’s data consumer.
ETL developers collaborate with business stakeholders and fellow developers to ensure configuration and delivery of ETL processes per defined specifications that are requested or assumed by the business domain.
Examples of data solutions may entail the implementation of a faster and more efficient job that transforms and loads data from a presently existing source, the creation of a data workflow that facilitates the creation of dashboards for the monitoring of database performance or customer data, or the acquisition and the transformation of data points from a newly acquired data provider.
An ETL developer is a technical role so those interested in becoming ETL developers need to demonstrate a good mix of technical skills and a great understanding of the business context where those skills will be put to the test.
A good route toward becoming an ETL developer is by first focusing on acquiring the skills necessary to become a data analyst. Analysts use scripting languages (such as Python) and interact with databases and data dashboards by way of SQL or a visualization tool such as Tableau. These are all great starting points to later focus on skills more relevant for the ETL developer role.
Once you’ve got the data analyst foundation, focus on developing data engineering skills, such as Airflow, as well as the development and maintenance of cloud data pipelines. You’ll also want to enhance your programming language skills (mostly Python).
ETL developer roles are a hybrid between a data analyst and a data engineer, and you will likely find different interpretations of such roles depending on industry and company, with some ETL developers leaning more towards analyzing data and others more focused on the management of those data sources on which the analysis depends.
The full compensation package for an ETL developer depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s experience and geographic location. See below for detailed information on the average ETL Developer salary.