From Data Science to Data Engineering

A Successful Journey

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.

Ovo Okpubuluku is a Data Engineer living in the Calgary Area in Alberta, Canada. Before pivoting to the tech industry in 2020, he had worked in Oil and Gas as an Engineering Technologist and in Banking as a branch operations, customer service and transaction processing officer. He began his journey into data science in December 2019 and shifted into data engineering in early 2022.

Facing hurdles

When he started his data engineering journey, it was problematic for him to find profound Data Engineer training and courses. There was an uptick in data engineering job openings, but from his experience not many people were talking about how to start a career in this field. Although data engineering has the same, if not a higher amount of job openings and talent needs in the job market, for him it seemed to be not as hyped as data science.

“Frankly, it took me a while to come to the conclusion that Data Engineering was for me. I was stuck in my Data Sciencing ways for quite a bit. Also, my introduction to Data Engineering was not a very pleasant experience. This was due to the set of courses I took at first in a prior Data Science program and how they were delivered, as well as the complexity and huge learning curve of the Hadoop Ecosystem all coming from the Big Data era. Because of that experience, I became very apprehensive about learning Data Engineering tools, and steered away from that area.”

However, with the advent of the cloud, and learning more about cloud resources, Ovo quickly saw that people can become Data Engineers without having to learn and use the Big Data technologies. The cloud seemed to even up the playing ground.

The perfect fit

Back then in 2021, Ovo also came across Andreas Kretz’s content. Listening to Andreas’s YouTube videos, and reading through his LinkedIn posts or blog posts on Medium helped Ovo to get to the point of believing that he should learn data engineering skills. He also read the Data Engineering Cookbook, which was a very encouraging proposition for him to take on the challenge of skilling up in data engineering. And Andreas’s Learn Data Engineering Academy seemed to be the perfect place for Ovo. From all the training and courses out there, the Academy was the only one that was a good fit for Ovo’s schedule and skill level at the time.

“Signing up for the academy was a natural choice at that point. This is because I have grown to trust Andreas’s perspectives and experience in the field. Also, the Academy became affordable when I landed a job, and so I signed up for a couple of years to quickly learn the content. The other reason I like the Academy is that it is 100% flexible, not cohort based with live classes. This fits my schedule perfectly, and allows me to set a cadence to learn when it is most convenient. I also love the hands on projects section. That was a huge deciding factor in getting into the Academy. It turned out that my Data Science role was not really focused on Data Science tasks, and when I took on more Data Engineering and Cloud platform projects, I changed my title to Data Engineer, and decided to go all in with the Academy.”

Courses and projects helped landing a Data Engineering job

Ovo studied all the courses available at the time. He found that the Academy helped him with fundamental understanding of data engineering design and theory, as well as the basic knowledge of how to apply the various tools commonly used in the field. The Academy also provided a foundation to build on in even more complex project settings. Ovo particularly likes that he gets lifetime access to the content, and can refer to it with confidence whenever he has to learn any new technology from the ground up.

Ovo’s expectations of the Academy were exceeded as he set out to study all the fundamental courses and get at least 2 projects into his portfolio by March 2023. After only two months of taking courses, Ovo began working on a data pipeline at work. This encouraged him to toss in some job applications between June and July of 2022, just to “test the waters”. He was surprised when he got several interviews, three of which progressed to the final stages. He chose the best offer for a Data Engineer role in a GCP consulting company in Toronto, which he started in August 2022.

Start your own journey

We hope you got inspired by Ovo’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!