4 Best Resources to Learn Data Engineering in 2025
Beginner to Pro courses and platforms to upskill your data competencies
Introduction
Mastering data engineering is fundamental to understanding how data is used, generated, stored, transformed, and ultimately relied upon to make key decisions at any company, whether you’re a startup or a more established enterprise.
You will likely be dabbing in various platforms, apps, and systems generating data, and the realm and skills of data engineering will be vital in mastering your knowledge of the specific data context you live in daily.
So whether you are looking to become a master in Data Engineering, or you are someone who works with Data Engineer and is looking to become a more effective data person, this piece is for you!
I present 4 key platforms and courses for you to start learning, exploring, and even getting professionally certified in Data Engineering and showcase your fundamental knowledge.
Let’s go!
Beginner: Zero to Mastery Intro to Data Engineering
Zero to Mastery Academy is a fantastic platform that offers on-demand learning and is specifically tailored to data roles. I’ve taken several of their courses in the past that I wrote about in other pieces.
They have a specific course (Introduction to Data Engineering) which is a great intro to understanding the topic and deciding whether you want to dive deeper into it, alongside a great article that has a full-blown roadmap to get you, as they say, from Zero to Hero!
The curriculum is a 101 deep dive into the data engineering world and is a great entry point to get a high-level understanding of the topic and a course completion certificate right after 1-hour of learning.
Course Structure
What is Data Engineering?
Why Learn Data Engineering?
Core Data Engineering Concepts
Data Storage and Database Management (Relational Databases, NoSQL Databases)
Data Pipelines (Design, Building, Maintenance)
Data Modeling and Schema Design
Collaboration and Cross-Team Communication
Data Integration and Ingestion
Data Transformation and Cleansing
Performance Optimization
Data Quality Assurance
Infrastructure Management
I suggest taking this as your step 1 before building on top of it.
Intermediate: Datacamp Data Engineer in Python
Datacamp is another great platform to learn online and embark upon the journey of becoming a Data Engineer. They offer a Data Engineer Track which takes you through Cloud Computing fundamentals, Python Programming, API versioning foundations, and orchestration with Airflow and gets you to learn via dedicated practical projects as well.
It is a good option to embark on a more serious learning adventure while remaining relatively high level. Want more? Let’s proceed.
Intermediate+: Coursera’s DeepLearning.AI Data Engineering Professional Certificate
Coursera’s probably my first love when it comes to a learning platform that has it all. The flexibility of an online platform paired with the academic robustness of university-level courses plus great partnerships with enterprise companies.
In this case, DeepLearning.AI and AWS partnered up to offer a great professional certificate and get you entry-level job-ready!
Track Structure
Pro level: Google Cloud Platform’s Data Engineer learning path
If you’re looking to get certified, the Google Cloud Platform’s Data Engineer Certification Exam is a great way to showcase specialized knowledge using Data Engineering Best Practices in a modern cloud platform.
I passed this exam a few years ago and found it incredibly useful for my career, as the company I work for uses GCP for some internal analytics use cases, and brushing up how using a cloud platform works will make you a more dangerous contributor at the data layer.
What you will learn:
Foundations of Data Engineering on Google Cloud
Building Batch Data Pipelines
Building Streaming Data Pipelines
Serverless Data Processing with Dataflow
Data Warehousing with BigQuery
Data Lakes and Data Mesh
Summary
Hopefully, this example gives you a sense of some areas you can tap into to jump and deepen your knowledge as an aspiring and upskilling Data Engineer!
Reach out if you have any questions, and thanks for reading!
Find me at @thedatanewsletter.io or the TechWithEdo Youtube Channel
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