What is data engineering?
Data engineering is the process of transforming raw data into a useful asset to inform an organisation’s business decisions. Data engineering services are critical to the success of any data-driven organisation, as it enables efficient and effective use of data analysis that informs decision-making. By providing data scientists and analysts with reliable and accessible data to create dashboards and reports, data engineering is essential for a successful data strategy.
How will data engineering change with the 2023-24 financial year?
As the need to lower costs increases for many businesses, they need to maximise their internal resources, such as the data they collect and process. From April, organisations will closer align their data operations with wider business strategies to make their budgets work smarter in the new financial year.
We’re here to help by expertly guiding your data engineering strategy with some of our predictions for data engineering trends over the next 12 months. Discover our predictions and insights to strengthen your data strategy, drive efficiencies and maximise business assets across this financial year below.
Dufrain’s 9 predictions for data engineering in 2025
1. The impact of ChatGPT
The widespread uptake of ChatGPT shows it is a useful tool that complements data engineering. A recent real-world example of this is translating complicated Excel formulas into SQL. It can also be used for other Google-related functions such as finding test and sample data sets, solving coding issues and conducting model training and data analysis, which fits seamlessly within a data driven culture. This can make these elements of the data engineering process much more efficient.
However, as ChatGPT continues to be widespread in use, data engineers should be aware of some of the issues this artificial intelligence chatbot entails. Chat GPT is not a silver bullet, but it can be a valuable tool in a data engineer’s toolkit. For best practice, extra vigilance should be taken when inputting data into ChatGPT if the source of the data is sensitive. Data engineers should also be cautious that ChatGPT may produce misleading output and raise security and plagiarism concerns.
2. Technology to support data governance
Dufrain has noticed an increase in the number of clients taking an interest in data governance solutions, such as Microsoft Purview and Unity Catalog. This unified data governance solution satisfies asset cataloguing and data lineage requirements, with native connectivity to industry-leading analytics combining data governance and data analytics in one place.
Accompanying this increased client interest in data governance, particularly in data lineage and quality, vendors have been more focused on providing data governance capabilities, including addressing aspects of “Data Migration“. For example, Databricks Unity Catalog now enables strong access control, data cataloguing and data lineage functionality implementation in the Delta lake architecture. This is one reason we believe that data governance and data quality engineering capabilities will become an increasing priority in the next financial year.
3. The rise of the ‘full stack’ engineer
As a specialist in software development and data analysis, the data engineer’s role is becoming increasingly acknowledged as ‘full stack’. This requirement to design, implement and test various data software is central to the development of an organisation’s data strategy.
For this reason, Dufrain believes that the expectations for data engineers will remain varied and broad, from CI/CD to ETL and MLOps. However, we expect that this will accompany a consolidation of the technical stacks to reduce the number of tools that data engineering teams require.
4. Establishing data mesh
Data mesh will continue to be discussed and endorsed across platforms such as LinkedIn and SQLBits. However, the complexity behind this data architecture poses a problem for organisations working towards data-driven proficiency.
Data mesh architecture is incredibly complex to implement as it represents a change in an organisation’s data culture. This is particularly true for federated governance, where extra care is needed to manage data assets and establish controls and lineage.
Due to the increasing demand for convenient data strategy, we expect to see a limited demand for data mesh in favour of less complex data architecture and more design effort in this space.
5. Data lakehouses become the default
Dufrain expects data lakehouses to grow in popularity. As organisations look for more effective ways to manage their vast quantities of data, the storage capabilities of data lakehouses will only grow in appeal.
Data lakehouses offer affordable storage solutions for large volumes of data that are easily scalable as the amount of data processed and stored increases over time, whilst also offering many of the benefits of the traditional data warehouse.
6. An uptake of ‘self-serve’ data practices
As a leading data consultancy, Dufrain is noticing a growing trend in the number of organisations seeking to create customised data dashboards and reports. This aims to relieve their current reliance on an internal data analyst or centralised IT team.
Whilst this could allow users to access data that is tailored to their specific needs, preferences and departments, ‘self-serve’ data presents some potential risks. Particularly, organisations should be cautious that without a complete, general view, their data may be misleading or biased.
To avoid this, extra vigilance should be taken to ensure the data used is reliable and unbiased through regular reviews and processes. This may include establishing internal data governance policies and providing training for all users to ensure data literacy and compliance. Of course, organisations should also perform regular audits to maintain data quality and integrity.
7. Increased demand for data business partners
The role of the business partner is to liaise between the organisation’s business areas and their internal data team to objectively identify and proactively prioritise business objectives. As subject matter experts, they offer a deep understanding of the organisation’s processes, goals and challenges, providing valuable insights to utilise their data.
By ensuring that data is being used to achieve these business objectives, business partners are vastly improving the alignment of business goals and data initiatives. As more organisations look to streamline this process, the role of business partners to define and prioritise data requests and data usage will only increase.
8. Synapse vs Databricks: the battle of the analytics tools
Dufrain expects data analytics tools to play an important role in the development of data engineering practices over the next few months. However, the competition between industry-leading platforms such as Databricks and Synapse may be a key driver in this, which will have a twofold impact.
Synapse is a good solution as a one-stop-shop analytics platform. However, Databricks offers strong data science capabilities and real-time capabilities. Both of these tools offer slightly different benefits, so it is best to speak with an experienced data consultancy like Dufrain to understand which is best suited to your requirements.
9. A promising job market
As the new financial year gets underway, career prospects for data engineers are looking strong. There is a high demand for the expertise and skill that they bring to wider data processes as more organisations look to leverage data insights.
To gain a competitive advantage, more organisations will look to outsource data engineering services and other support with their data requirements from expert data consultants.
Discover Dufrain’s industry-leading data engineering services
From big data storage to cloud data engineering solutions and data warehousing. Dufrain’s data engineering services can support all of your data requirements at scale, providing reliable solutions and expert guidance. Are you ready to optimise your data and make better-informed business decisions this financial year?
[km-cta-block padding=20 block-classes=”has-dark-teal-background-colour has-white-colour” label=”Contact us for a free data health check” ]
Take control of your data
Contact Dufrain today or call us on 0800 130 3656 to discuss your data engineering requirements.
[km_button link=”https://www.dufrain.co.uk/contact/” classes=”cta-2″]Contact us[/km_button] or [km_button link=”tel:08001303656″ classes=”cta-2″]Call us on 0800 130 3656[/km_button][/km-cta-block]