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How to become a data engineer: 41 beginner jobs open today
Five steps for people changing careers, with the figures from today’s 393 open data engineer postings: what employers ask for first, how much experience, and what beginners are paid.
- Open jobs today
- 393
- Open to beginners
- 41
- Experience asked, median
- 5 years
- Beginner pay, median
- $149K
Five steps to your first data engineer job
- Know what the work is. A data engineer builds the pipelines that collect a company’s data and put it where analysts can use it. Beginner postings today use titles like Data Engineer; Data Engineer (Starlink); Software Engineer (AI Data Engineering); Data Engineer II; Analytics Engineer.
- Learn the skills employers name first. In today’s 393 postings: SQL (76%), Python (72%), dbt (48%), Airflow (42%), Snowflake (38%).
- Build proof you can show. Two or three results with a number, from a job, a course project or volunteer work. The kind of line a recruiter looks for: “Built pipelines in Airflow that load 2 billion rows a day; data is ready by 6 am instead of noon”.
- Write the resume and the letter. Start from the data engineer resume example and the cover letter example, and replace every line with your own.
- Apply where beginners are hired. 41 of today’s 393 open data engineer jobs are junior or intern roles or ask for two years of experience or less. See the open jobs and check each one with the resume match checker before you apply.
Questions about becoming a data engineer
- How much experience do data engineer jobs ask for?
- The median in today’s postings is 5 years; 14% of the postings that name a number ask for two years or less.
- Do I need a degree to become a data engineer?
- 9% of today’s 393 postings say no degree is required. Many others accept equivalent experience: read the requirements of each posting.
- How much does a beginner data engineer earn?
- Junior and intern postings for this work that state pay advertise a median of $149K a year (17 postings).
Everything about data engineer work
Counted from the open postings on Nov 14, 2026, read from employers’ own careers pages and recounted on every update. Beginner jobs: junior and intern titles, and postings that ask for two years of experience or less.