Will AI replace a Data Engineer?
Estimated risk score: 56 out of 100
Moderate replacement risk
Estimate · how we score
Our take: AI writes the SQL. Humans still own what 'correct' means.
Horizon: about 4 years. That is our estimate of how long until headcount in this role falls by 30% or more.
Median salary $155k a year · Engineering
What AI already does well
- Writing standard ETL pipelines and dbt models
- Building dashboards from SQL templates
- Mapping schema between source and warehouse
What keeps you valuable
A moderate score means some of today’s tasks in this role can be automated — not that you will lose your job. People in roles like yours stay valuable by moving toward the work AI is bad at. Build on these:
- Data contracts, lineage, and reliability SLOs
- Real-time streaming systems with millisecond budgets
- Working with product to define what to even measure
Keep going
The closest scores in Engineering
How we score. Each score is our estimate, from 0 to 100, of how exposed a role is to AI replacement, calibrated against published research: Goldman Sachs on generative AI (2023), McKinsey’s State of AI surveys, Brynjolfsson and Mitchell (Science, 2017) and Frey and Osborne (2013; published 2017). It is not a prediction about any one person and not career advice. Disagree with a score? Write to hello@yourstopwashit.com. Read the methodology
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