Why you should consider Learning Data Visualisation as a Data Engineer
As a data engineer should you even bother with Data Visualisation?
This is a short article highlighting the importance of visualisation skills for those intending to pursue data engineering or who are already in the field.
Data Visualisation is not usually one of the skills recommended to learn when breaking or transitioning into the data engineering field, especially when you didn’t start out as a data analyst. It’s seen more as a required skill for business /data analysts. You might be wondering whether it’s worth the time and effort to invest in tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Looker when there are other core data engineering skills to invest your time in, like Data Modelling, Orchestration, and Building Data Pipelines.
This was the question going through my mind last year when I was contemplating taking the Pl-900 Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate Certification as I had been in the data field for close to two years then and was in the middle of transitioning to a full-fledged data engineer and I was doubtful if it was going to be of any use to me in my data engineering career So, I did what anyone in their right mind would do I asked Chat GPT, and here was the response I received.
If you think about it actually, this response makes a lot of sense, especially considering how competitive the data engineer/software engineering landscape is; if one is to have any chance of standing out from the countless resumes being sent to each job offer, one has to stand out from the competition with more than just core data engineering skills and show evidence of being a good collaborator with other teammates and an excellent communicator with end users and having good visualisation skills points to that direction.
Another reason is Business intelligence, Data visualisation and business intelligence go hand in hand as BI provides the foundation for data-driven decision-making, while data visualisation plays a crucial role in presenting the insights from BI in a clear and impactful way. They are complementary forces that work together to transform raw data into actionable business intelligence.
Also, it looks really great on your CV. It is always great to have a visual/dashboard attached to end-to-end projects with insights/comments on your data to showcase to prospective employers.
In Summary, if you are considering investing in data visualisation skills but are hesitant about learning them, this is a sign that you should.
