I’m still relatively new to the field of data engineering, and I’ve noticed some patterns about the kind of work that data engineers handle and who that work benefits.

I did a data engineering internship this last summer at a midsized fintech company, which was my first time seeing “real” data engineering firsthand. The work itself was pretty interesting and I liked the people I worked with, but came to the conclusion that the only benefit that my work had on the company was getting data into the hands of the reporting team.

I came to this realization because as I was updating my resume with my new internship experience, the only way that I could really quantify my work was essentially “saved time and effort for the reporting team.” I had no clue what my impact was on the business or my work was being used. It was kind of an alarming feeling.

I think I’d like to ask: is this normal? Is most data engineering work geared toward just being data stewards, and getting the data to other people?

Is there such thing as a data engineer that works on a “customer-facing” product, where I’d be able to tangibly explain how I impacted the product or business?