I worked with an AI startup that offered data engineering services to its clients. As the head of data engineering, I got an in-depth view of the world of data engineering. Data engineering has a huge demand and potential in coming years.

Understanding the scope of data engineering

Although the data engineering field became popular after 2015, it's been in existence for a long time. Think about the SMEs who had no option but to store their data at local servers - with with no security and backups.

Microsoft, AWS and Google noticed a big opportunity and developed cloud services to port this data to cloud. Given the advantages of cloud, moving the data to cloud from local premises was a no-brainer move for almost every SME and even enterprise clients.

All the big cloud providers have built an amazing portfolio of services around data migration and processing; which ensures that data engineering is going to be in demand for several years.

Demand for data engineers will grow

I'm confident that data engineering will become very popular in coming years and the salaries will also boost. There are a ton of projects that boutique startups and large enterprise IT companies are working on which are focused on data engineering. It's a field easy to enter and make a career in.

Let me know if that answers your question.

Update: While the demand for data engineers grows every year, the availability of skilled data engineers is a challenge. That's the reason there are several companies wanting to hire remotely.

There are several jobs where data engineers can work from home. All you will need is a good computer and a strong Internet connection.

Update - please do check this article about big data engineering . Plus, a question on can data engineers can switch to machine learning career.