Data Analyst vs Engineer – which career path should I choose /u/baconybacon45 CSCQ protests reddit

Hi all,

For a bit of context, I’ve been working as a data engineer for the past 2.5 years, first role in a small-medium fintech company that went out of business last year, and after 3 months of unemployment, in September last year I started a 1 year contract role in another fintech company – with 8 months remaining on the contract at this point. The contract role is to cover for another data engineer on maternity leave.

In my second month here the company introduced an ‘exchange’ program for new starters, in this program I went into a team of PMs, and do analytics/reporting work for them – things like extracting datasets from our Snowflake database, building Tableau reports… standard analyst work. Fast forward the exchange ended and they loved having an in house analyst so much (they’re not overly technical), the Product team got approval for a dedicated Analyst role and they would like to offer me the role before looking for someone on the market.

Now even though I do enjoy doing analyst work to an extent, and the dynamic/culture of the Product team is a much better match than the Data team, I do want to progress my career in the Data Engineering space. However if I accept the role I’d have a permanent contract right now, even though my manager said they do want to offer me a permanent role it is subjected to be reviewed in September when my contract ends, and it isn’t 100% that the company will have capacity/budget to keep me.

Should I take the role for job security? Or should I hold out and stay in Data Engineering? Any other perspective is appreciated, TIA 🙂

Hi all,

For a bit of context, I’ve been working as a data engineer for the past 2.5 years, first role in a small-medium fintech company that went out of business last year, and after 3 months of unemployment, in September last year I started a 1 year contract role in another fintech company – with 8 months remaining on the contract at this point. The contract role is to cover for another data engineer on maternity leave.

In my second month here the company introduced an ‘exchange’ program for new starters, in this program I went into a team of PMs, and do analytics/reporting work for them – things like extracting datasets from our Snowflake database, building Tableau reports… standard analyst work. Fast forward the exchange ended and they loved having an in house analyst so much (they’re not overly technical), the Product team got approval for a dedicated Analyst role and they would like to offer me the role before looking for someone on the market.

Now even though I do enjoy doing analyst work to an extent, and the dynamic/culture of the Product team is a much better match than the Data team, I do want to progress my career in the Data Engineering space. However if I accept the role I’d have a permanent contract right now, even though my manager said they do want to offer me a permanent role it is subjected to be reviewed in September when my contract ends, and it isn’t 100% that the company will have capacity/budget to keep me.

Should I take the role for job security? Or should I hold out and stay in Data Engineering? Any other perspective is appreciated, TIA 🙂