Code, Data, and Success

How Prakash Managed to Merge His Interests and Became a Senior Data Engineer

Meet the students of the Learn Data Engineering Academy — a group of passionate individuals who are dedicated to mastering the art of data engineering. In this mini series of success stories, we will explore the journeys of these students, from their initial interest in data engineering to their current success in the industry. Join us as we celebrate their achievements and inspire others to pursue their dreams in the world of data engineering.

Prakash Dontaraju, a Senior Data Engineer at SentinelOne, embarked on a rewarding career transition. On his professional journey, Prakash started his career as a software engineer and later found himself drawn to data analysis. While working as a data analyst, he relished understanding business data, its aggregation, lineage, and security.

However, he missed the aspects of software engineering, such as writing code, testing, logging, performance optimization, and design patterns. This led him to explore data engineering as a way to merge his interests and build scalable data solutions, thus setting his sights on becoming a data engineer.

Leveling Up With the Academy’s 1-on-1 Coaching

Having been inspired by Andreas Kretz, an experienced Data Engineer, through his practical advice and technical knowledge shared on LinkedIn, Prakash decided to enroll in the Learn Data Engineering Academy’s 1-on-1 coaching program in 2020. The Academy’s insights into the day-to-day life of a data engineer and the required skills convinced him that this was the right step to shape his data engineering career.

Prakash’s coaching journey with Andreas spanned around three months and closely mirrored the tasks of professional data engineers: building data pipelines. For his project, Prakash chose a dataset, selected the appropriate tools for his data pipeline, and deployed it on the Google Cloud Platform, making him the first student to opt for GCP back then. Throughout the program, he successfully built two data pipelines — one streaming and the other batch — each scalable and reliable.

“The best thing about the program was having two hours of office hours with Andreas each week to discuss my progress. I could share any data engineering challenges I had in finishing my project and get his feedback. During those office hours, I also saw the challenges other members had in implementing their projects and understood how Andreas helped them solve their challenges.”

Long-lasting Impact

One of the key areas where Andreas assisted Prakash was in understanding how to choose the right skills and tools for specific data pipelines. He learned to carefully consider business requirements while designing the pipeline components, including data ingestion, buffering, processing, storage, and analysis.

Beyond completing his project successfully, Prakash’s time in the coaching program left a lasting impact.

“During my time in the coaching program, many others successfully built data pipelines using various tools and cloud platforms. I was able to understand how experienced data engineers solved data engineering challenges when Andreas answered our questions. I now always think about reliability, scalability, data quality, streaming or batch processing, choice of tools etc. before building a new data pipeline.”

Witnessing the Academy’s Growth

Prakash was an early member of the Learn Data Engineering community when it was known as “Team Data Science”, with just a small Slack channel and less than 50 members. He expresses joy in seeing how the Academy has now helped over 1500 individuals acquire Data Engineering skills and certifications.

“Personally, I’m grateful for the guidance Andreas provided. I wish all the members and everyone involved in building the academy more success.”

Start Your Own Journey

Prakash’s inspiring journey showcases how the Learn Data Engineering Academy can empower professionals to transition into the world of data engineering and excel in this dynamic field.

Congratulations to Prakash on his success! We hope you got as inspired as we did by Prakash’s journey. Now the big question for you is: are you ready to start your very own Data Engineering success story? Then join our Learn Data Engineering Academy today!

If you are interested, but still have a few burning questions on your mind: feel free to contact me via hello@learndataengineering.com or mention me on Twitter.

For more information and content on Data Engineering, also check out my other blog posts, videos and more on Medium, YouTube and LinkedIn!