Career spotlights
AWS Data Engineer
How much do Data Engineers make?
* Survey responses in the remainder of this chapter are indicative only due to a limited number of Data Engineers participating in the survey.
of Data Engineers are satisfied with their job, up from 65% in our last survey
of Data Engineers are satisfied with their salary, up from 81% in our previous survey
Hours
Permanent Data Engineers work an average of 41 hours per week
Hours
Freelance Data Engineers work an average of 35 hours per week
What factors impact your earning potential as a Data Engineer?
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Years of experience in IT | 100% | 0% | 0% |
| Years of technical experience with AWS | 92% | 8% | 0% |
| Exposure to large projects | 92% | 8% | 0% |
| Specific vertical industry experience | 75% | 25% | 0% |
| College/University degree(s) | 75% | 17% | 8% |
| Working with AI | 75% | 25% | 0% |
| AWS certifications | 67% | 8% | 25% |
| Years of experience in IT | 100% |
| Years of technical experience with AWS | 92% |
| Exposure to large projects | 92% |
| Specific vertical industry experience | 75% |
| College/University degree(s) | 75% |
| Working with AI | 75% |
| AWS certifications | 67% |
| Years of experience in IT | 0% |
| Years of technical experience with AWS | 8% |
| Exposure to large projects | 8% |
| Specific vertical industry experience | 25% |
| College/University degree(s) | 17% |
| Working with AI | 25% |
| AWS certifications | 8% |
| Years of experience in IT | 0% |
| Years of technical experience with AWS | 0% |
| Exposure to large projects | 0% |
| Specific vertical industry experience | 0% |
| College/University degree(s) | 8% |
| Working with AI | 0% |
| AWS certifications | 25% |
What steps should you take to become a Data Engineer?
Education
In terms of what you might need, 84% of Data Engineers hold at least a Bachelor’s degree. While 48% consider a degree to be an important factor in increasing earning potential, only 36% think that a degree is essential to work with AWS.
Certification
Obtaining an AWS certification is not only an effective way to enhance your skills, but it also gives you a competitive edge in the job market by validating your expertise to potential employers.
Over half (55%, up from 33% in our last survey) of Data Engineers are certified, and 50% of those have undergone recertification to maintain their AWS Certified Status. While 88% of certified respondents believe that certifications help candidates stand out in a competitive job market.
The most relevant vendor-accredited certification for a Data Engineer looking to enhance their appeal is the AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate badge, which covers Data Ingestion and Transformation, Data Store Management, Data Operations and Support, and Data Security and Governance.
The cert replaces the AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty exam, so if you have that already then this new course isn’t essential, but if you have neither then you’d be advised to add it to your to-do list.
Roles that can lead on to becoming a Data Engineer
Data Engineers can originate from a wide variety of IT backgrounds, and the great news is that there’s no set path that professionals must follow—you just need to have a passion for data!
Some of the most common entry-level roles we see candidates starting in include:
- Junior Data Engineer
- Data Analyst
- Software Engineer
- Web developers
What skills and experience should Data Engineers have?
- Proficiency in using data and analytics services on AWS in collaboration with third-party tools
- Capable of building data models to gather information from various sources
- Understanding of performance optimization through improved database design
- Skill in employing backup and recovery mechanisms to maintain data integrity
- Expertise in designing and developing large-scale enterprise data solutions and applications
- Ability to re-architect on-premise data warehouses and migrate them to AWS
- Familiarity with programming languages such as Java, Python, and Scala
- Confidence in building data pipelines and managing large datasets
- Ability to leverage data insights to guide business decisions
- Knowledge of AWS security groups and their implementation
What are the opportunities for progression?
Data Engineer
Senior Data/ML Engineer
Lead Data Engineer
Head Of Data Engineering
Chief Data Officer
Are you looking to hire an AWS professional?
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Careers and Hiring Guide
AWS Edition 2025
Key Findings
Our key findings report contains highlights from this year’s Careers and Hiring Guide, plus our salary tables to allow you to compare your compensation or benchmark your teams’ salaries or rates no matter their role in the AWS ecosystem.
