Five paths, one training platform. Every path is built from the same 30+ courses and projects — the order and selection are what change. Find where you fit in 30 seconds.
Pick the closest match. We’ll highlight the path that usually fits — you can still explore the others.
All 5 paths share the same library of 30+ courses. Start with one — you can always pivot without starting over.
Module 02 (Batch) and Module 05 (AI & Vectors) appear in most paths — they're the shared backbone of modern data work. Start with either and you're moving forward regardless of which role you end up in.
“Data engineer” is no longer one job. In 2026 the market has split into five distinct roles with different daily work, different interview rubrics, different salary bands, and different on-call expectations. Picking the right one isn’t about which tools you know — it’s about which problem you want to solve every day for the next 3–5 years.
Three questions answer this faster than any quiz: (1) Do you want to work with business teams or with engineering teams? Business-leaning → Analytics + Product DE. Engineering-leaning → everything else. (2) Do you want to ship features or build platforms? Features → Core DE or AI DE. Platforms → Platform DE or AI/ML Platform. (3) Where do you want to be in 5 years — staff engineer, technical lead, or director? Staff (depth) → Platform or AI/ML Platform. Lead (breadth) → Core DE or Analytics DE. Director (people) → any of the above plus explicit management track.
Most career-path content stops at “here’s the role description.” The five paths below go further: each one specifies the architectures you’ll defend in interviews, the salary band by seniority, the median time-to-first-offer for switchers, the on-call expectations, and the named hiring rubric (system design / coding / behavioral split). Every path is built from the same 32-curriculum, 30+-project core — what differs is the order, the emphasis, and the capstone you ship as your interview portfolio.
The senior+ bar is different per role. Core DE senior owns a domain (orders, billing, growth) and the pipelines that serve it end-to-end. AI DE senior owns a retrieval system or an LLM pipeline and the eval framework that gates its releases. Platform senior owns infrastructure that other engineers depend on — and the SLA for it. Analytics senior owns a metrics layer + experimentation system + a quarterly stakeholder review cadence. AI/ML Platform senior owns the feature store, model deployment, and the drift detection that keeps production models honest.
The grid below shows each path’s daily-work shape, hiring signal for 2026, salary band, and capstone project. Pick the closest match — if more than one fits, optimize for the day-to-day work, not the salary band (the bands converge at senior+ across all five paths, and you’ll spend 90% of your career in the daily work).
Each card shows what you’ll actually build, how long it realistically takes, and what the market is asking for in 2026.
Own Airflow DAGs, dbt models, Spark jobs, and the lakehouse they feed. Ship 6 production projects, each one interview-ready.
Vector retrieval, feature stores, LLM batch enrichment, evaluation pipelines. The infra that makes AI actually work in production.
Multi-tenant Airflow, cost attribution, self-service tooling, SLAs. The work that gets you promoted to staff.
Model the warehouse so analysts can trust it. dbt-first, contract-driven, semantic-layer native. Bridge data and product.
Multi-tenant LLM serving, model registries, feature stores, drift monitoring. The platform layer that makes production AI actually work — and the work that gets you to staff.
The honest differences. Pick based on what you actually want your day to look like.
| Core Data Engineer | AI Data Engineer | Data Platform Engineer | Analytics / Product Data Engineer | AI Platform Engineer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best if you… | Want broad demand | Want the AI-era edge | Already shipping, want scale | Love SQL + business | Already senior, want AI infra |
| Time to role | 3–6 mo | 3–5 mo | Senior only | 2–4 mo | Senior+ only |
| Coding needed | Medium | Medium–High | High | Low–Medium | High |
| Math / ML | None | Low | None | None | Low |
| On-call | Yes | Sometimes | Yes | Rare | Yes |
| Hiring signal · 2026 | 🔥 Hot (high demand) | 🚀 Exploding (fastest hiring) | Senior-only | ↗ Growing | Senior+ only |
Jump straight to the advanced projects that stretch you — AI data infra, streaming at scale, platform engineering.
Five questions. A personalized plan. Free first module unlocks in your inbox.