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Reporting & analytics engineering

BI Developer

Building the dashboard the whole company argues about.

Typical pay

$80k-$140k

How you get in

SQL plus a BI platform; degree optional

Outlook

Strong; every organization wants better reporting

BI developers build data models, reports and dashboards that businesses run decisions on. It sits between data engineering and analysis, and it is one of the more accessible well-paid data roles.

A day in the life

  1. 8:30aCheck overnight refresh failures
  2. 9:30aBuild a semantic model for a new subject area
  3. 11:30aRequirements session with the finance team
  4. 1:00pLunch
  5. 2:00pOptimize a report that takes too long to load
  6. 4:00pDocument metric definitions so people stop disagreeing about them

How to get in

Analyst into BI development

Duration

1-3 years

Cost

$0-$3,000

Credential

Power BI or Tableau certification

  1. Start as a data or business analyst using SQL daily
  2. Learn dimensional modeling — this is what separates BI from reporting
  3. Master Power BI or Tableau including their modeling languages
  4. Move into a dedicated BI developer role

Self-taught with a portfolio

Duration

6-12 months

Cost

$100-$2,000

Credential

Platform certification plus public dashboards

  1. Learn SQL properly, then a BI tool in depth
  2. Build public dashboards on real datasets
  3. Learn dbt and analytics engineering practices
  4. Apply to BI and analytics engineering roles

BI into data engineering

Duration

2-4 years

Cost

$0-$5,000

Credential

Cloud data platform certifications

  1. Work as a BI developer and learn the warehouse deeply
  2. Add Python, orchestration and pipeline skills
  3. Move into analytics engineering, then data engineering
  4. Notably higher ceiling than staying in pure reporting

What people love

  • · Strong pay without a computer science degree
  • · Remote-friendly
  • · Highly visible impact on decisions
  • · Clear path into data engineering or analytics leadership

What wears people down

  • · Endless dashboard requests
  • · Stakeholders disagree about what a metric means
  • · Upstream data quality problems land on you
  • · Tool-specific skills can lock you into one ecosystem

From people doing it

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