QA Data Engineers: A New Perspective Profession

Dmitrii Malygin
Rock Your Data
Published in
3 min readMar 22, 2023

In this era of vast amounts of information, companies depend a lot on experts known as data analysts and engineers. Their job is to collect, change, and study data so that they can create helpful reports and presentations that assist decision-makers in making choices based on facts. But, sometimes, things can go wrong in the process, and data can be missing, copied, or changed unintentionally. When this happens, the information provided can be incorrect or insufficient, causing the company to make bad choices based on it.

To reduce these dangers, it’s crucial to create a system that confirms the correctness and entirety of the data. This is where Quality Assurance (QA) data engineers become important. They have the task of verifying the data pipeline to make sure that any conclusions drawn from the analysis are based on the latest and most precise data.

Even though QA data engineers are necessary, there isn’t a specific job title for this position available right now. Regular data analysts and engineers do not usually test data pipelines as part of their duties. This is a problem that must be solved, and companies should think about hiring QA data engineers to their teams to make sure that their data findings are reliable.

Data testing levels resemble software testing, and they have three primary stages: unit testing, integration testing, and acceptance testing. During unit testing, the separate parts of the data pipeline are checked to confirm they operate accurately. Integration testing combines the components to test how they work together as a unit. Finally, acceptance testing evaluates the complete data pipeline to ensure it fulfills the expectations and standards of the people using it.

Picking the right control parameters to test data is vital in decreasing the time needed to debug. Control parameters are the aspects that impact how the data pipeline works. By choosing the appropriate control parameters, QA data engineers can cut down the time it takes to find and solve problems with the data pipeline.

Having another analyst review and write tests for the code can significantly quicken data testing. When another analyst assesses the code and tests written by the QA data engineer, they can give their input and recognize possible problems that the QA data engineer might not have noticed. This approach can guarantee that the data pipeline is precise and dependable.

To maintain the quality of data marts and reports, it’s necessary to produce tests. These tests should evaluate the correctness, entirety, and punctuality of the data. By establishing tests, QA data engineers can detect problems and avoid using incorrect or incomplete data to make business decisions.

Companies are dealing with more and more data every day. The people in charge of analyzing and processing this data spend a lot of time checking for errors, making sure everything is in the right format, and ensuring that the final dashboards are accurate. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have a way to notify their analysts or engineers when something goes wrong with the data or the data pipeline. This is where QA data engineers come in — they can take on these responsibilities and free up time for the analysts and engineers to focus on more important tasks. I believe that the demand for QA data engineers is growing, and it could become a new profession in the market.

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