What is a data engineer?

In Chapter 1, Getting Started with Alteryx, we defined data engineering as follows:

Data engineering is the process of taking data from any number of disparate sources and transforming them into a usable format for an end user.

This definition focuses on data engineering as a process and getting the data from the source to the end user. It does not consider where the data source is, who the end user is, or even the tools they use to accomplish the job. Those details are not crucial to the definition. You want to get data from the source to the user.

The definition only captures part of the complexity of the data engineering job. For example, while identifying the end user does not matter to our definition of data engineering, completing a data engineering project relies on knowing the end user.

As the data engineer, building a data pipeline requires knowing where the data is coming from, its format, and if that format has changed. Understanding...