Blog

Writing from our team. The latest news, insights, and resources.

How to earn rewards by sharing the knowledge!

Referring a friend to something you genuinely believe in is one of the simplest yet most powerful ways to create opportunities. With that in mind, we’re excited to introduce the Data Engineer Academy Referral Program—a way to reward you for sharing the benefits of industry-leading data engineering training with the people you know. We designed...

By: Chris Garzon | November 25, 2024 | 8 mins read
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How to host a website on AWS EC2

In today’s digital world, both individuals and businesses require a powerful website. However, finding a trustworthy hosting company is an important step in creating a website. Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 provides a strong and scalable infrastructure for hosting websites, making it a great alternative for your hosting requirements. Step-by-step instructions for how to host...

By: ninad magdum | June 17, 2023 | 13 mins read
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15 Must-Have Data Engineering Skills for the Career Transitioner

Introduction If you are already working with data as an analyst, a BI developer, a QA engineer, or a SQL-fluent IT professional you have probably noticed something: data engineering jobs pay well, the demand is strong, and a meaningful portion of the role overlaps with work you already do. But there is a gap between...

By: Chris Garzon | June 24, 2026 | 18 mins read
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Essential Data Engineering Skills: A Practical Guide for Career Transitioners

Introduction Data engineering is one of the fastest-growing technical disciplines in the industry, and the demand for qualified professionals is outpacing the supply. That gap is an opportunity but only for people who show up with the right skills. If you are transitioning into data engineering from a neighboring role – analytics, IT, software-adjacent work,...

By: Chris Garzon | June 24, 2026 | 22 mins read
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soft skills for data engineer

Soft Skills for Data Engineer: 10 Skills That Matter Most

Introduction Most content about becoming a data engineer focuses on the technical stack: SQL, Python, dbt, Airflow, Spark, cloud platforms. That is appropriate. The technical foundation matters. But there is a reason experienced data engineers and hiring managers consistently say the same thing: the candidates who struggle in their first year are not usually struggling...

By: Chris Garzon | June 24, 2026 | 17 mins read
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Data Catalogs for Data Engineers

Data Catalogs for Data Engineers: DataHub, OpenMetadata, Collibra, and Alation

Data catalogs help data engineers find trusted data faster, understand where it came from, and keep pipelines easier to debug. For dxata engineering teams, the right catalog turns scattered metadata into searchable context, so you spend less time chasing table owners and more time fixing real issues. DataHub, OpenMetadata, Collibra, and Alation all solve that...

By: Chris Garzon | June 23, 2026 | 8 mins read
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Synthetic Data for Testing Data Pipelines

Synthetic Data for Testing Data Pipelines: When It Helps and When It Fails

Synthetic data testing helps when you need safe, fast, repeatable pipeline tests. It fails when the data is too clean, too random, or too simple to expose what production will do. If you build ETL, ELT, or streaming jobs, synthetic data can speed up development, but it can’t replace reality checks. The safest approach is...

By: Chris Garzon | June 19, 2026 | 8 mins read
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LLM Observability for Data Engineers

LLM Observability for Data Engineers: Traces, Prompts, Outputs, and Feedback Loops

LLM observability is the practice of tracking what a model request saw, how it moved through your system, what it returned, and what happened next. Data engineers need it because LLMs don’t behave like normal batch jobs. Two requests that look the same can still produce different answers, costs, or failures. Basic logs won’t catch...

By: Chris Garzon | June 18, 2026 | 10 mins read
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AI Agent Data Engineering

AI Agent Data Engineering: Logs, Memory, Tools, and Evaluation Data

AI agent data engineering is the work of capturing, storing, and connecting everything an agent does while it runs. That includes logs, memory updates, tool calls, and evaluation records. If you only save raw chat transcripts, you miss the data you need to debug failures, track quality, and improve results over time. Good agent systems...

By: Chris Garzon | June 17, 2026 | 11 mins read
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Unstructured Data Pipelines for LLMs

Unstructured Data Pipelines for LLMs: PDFs, HTML, Images, and Metadata

An unstructured data pipeline for LLMs turns messy files into clean, searchable content the model can trust. It pulls text and context from PDFs, web pages, images, and attached metadata, then organizes everything into chunks that work for retrieval and RAG. If you skip that prep, the model often reads content in the wrong order,...

By: Chris Garzon | June 16, 2026 | 9 mins read
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Hybrid Search for RAG

Hybrid Search for RAG: Vector, Keyword, and Reranking Pipelines

Hybrid search for RAG combines vector search, keyword search, and reranking so the system finds both semantic matches and exact terms. That mix improves retrieval quality, reduces missed evidence, and gives the LLM stronger grounding. No single method is enough for every query, because fuzzy questions, product codes, acronyms, and policy names behave differently. When...

By: Chris Garzon | June 15, 2026 | 9 mins read
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RAG Evaluation Pipelines

RAG Evaluation Pipelines: Datasets, Relevance Labels, and Quality Metrics

A good RAG evaluation pipeline checks three things: whether retrieval finds the right context, whether the model uses that context well, and whether the final answer is correct. If you run only one-off tests, you won’t know where a failure started. RAG systems break at different steps, so the evaluation has to measure different steps...

By: Chris Garzon | June 14, 2026 | 9 mins read
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Junior Data Engineer Mock

Junior Data Engineer Mock Interview Rubric: What Good Answers Sound Like

Good answers in a junior data engineer mock interview are clear, structured, and honest. You don’t need senior-level depth. You need to answer the question, explain your thinking, and stay accurate when you’re unsure. Interviewers aren’t only testing SQL or Python facts. They’re checking whether you’d be safe on a real pipeline, easy to work...

By: Chris Garzon | June 13, 2026 | 9 mins read
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dbt and Analytics Engineering Interview Questions

dbt and Analytics Engineering Interview Questions for Data Engineers

dbt and analytics engineering interviews test whether you can turn warehouse data into trusted, analysis-ready tables. Expect dbt interview questions about SQL, data modeling, tests, and the choices that keep pipelines reliable. You don’t need every dbt feature memorized. You do need the core workflow, the reason analytics engineering exists, and where dbt fits in...

By: Chris Garzon | June 12, 2026 | 9 mins read
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Cloud Data Engineer Interview Questions

Cloud Data Engineer Interview Questions: AWS, Azure, Snowflake, and Databricks

Cloud data engineer interviews reward clear thinking more than perfect recall. The best way to prepare for cloud data engineer interview questions is to focus on cloud basics, SQL, data pipelines, security, and hands-on work across AWS, Azure, Snowflake, and Databricks. Most interviews mix short concept checks with open-ended design problems. You need to explain...

By: Chris Garzon | June 11, 2026 | 9 mins read
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Data Quality Interview Questions

Data Quality Interview Questions for Data Engineers: Tests, SLAs, and Ownership

Interviewers ask data quality interview questions to see whether you can stop bad data before it spreads, catch issues fast, and handle ownership when something breaks. They want practical judgment, not textbook terms. A strong answer shows how you design checks, define service targets, and respond calmly during incidents. If you can explain what you...

By: Chris Garzon | June 10, 2026 | 9 mins read
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