The best online data engineering courses will help you get the skills, knowledge, and certifications you need to build a successful career in this fast-growing field.
Data engineering is a field that is growing rapidly as more and more businesses are looking to harness the power of data. As a result, there is an increasing demand for skilled data engineers.
The best thing about learning data engineering is that resources are just a click away. You can learn everything you need to know about data engineering online.
Taking online courses to learn data engineering offers a multitude of benefits that can propel your career forward in today’s data-centric landscape.
Online courses provide a flexible learning environment that fits seamlessly into your schedule. Whether you’re a working professional seeking to upskill or a student aiming to enhance your knowledge, the convenience of online learning allows you to balance your educational pursuits with your other commitments. This flexibility empowers you to build valuable, in-demand data engineering skills without disrupting your daily routine.
Not only that, online data engineer courses often offer a diverse range of topics, catering to learners of all experience levels – from beginners looking for data engineering fundamentals to seasoned professionals seeking advanced techniques. This makes it super easy for you to tailor your learning path to align with your current skill level and future aspirations, ensuring that you acquire the knowledge most relevant to your goals.
Learning data engineering online also grants you access to a vast array of resources, including video lectures, interactive assignments, real-world projects, and peer interactions, ensuring that you grasp theoretical concepts while gaining hands-on experience that mirrors the challenges you’ll encounter in actual data engineering roles.
Whether you’re thinking of switching careers or just a fresh graduate looking for ways to step into the world of data engineering: we’ve got a course recommendation for everybody!
We’ve reviewed and ranked the best online data engineering classes based on key factors, including cost, duration, difficulty, instructor credentials, student review, and whether they offer a certification.
Disclosure:Â Some of the links in this article are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost for you, we might get a commission if you click the link and purchase.
What are the Best Data Engineering Courses Online?
Here are our picks for the top data engineering classes you can take online in 2023…
1. Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree Program (Udacity)
Learn Data Structures and Algorithms (Udacity)
With this course, you'll get hands-on practice with over 100 data structures and algorithm exercises along with expert support to get you ready for a career in the field.
Price
This course is available at a monthly cost of $399 or $1,356 for 4-month access.
Duration
The estimated duration of this course is 4 months, with a pace of 10 hours per week.
This course is a nanodegree program which means that you can take up a skill-based educational program, along with a credential confirming your expertise. It has 80+ practice problems that help you understand data structures and algorithms better and also polish your skills.
This course aims to teach you data structures and algorithms, along with how to deal with the problems associated with them. These two topics are a key part of any data engineering job, so enrolling in this course will help you get a good insight into the field.
The curriculum touches upon a number of areas, including Python. The best part about this course is that it offers career services, such as access to Github Portfolio Review and LinkedIn Profile optimization; meaning that you will be well prepared for a career the data industry after completing this course.
After completing this data engineering course, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to evaluate and assess different data structures and algorithms for any open-ended problem and find practical solutions.
What You Will Learn
- Revision of Python skills
- How data structures are used to store data
- How to manipulate data structures
- Determining the efficiency of data structures
- How to deal with open-ended problems
- How to implement algorithms using recursion
- Modifying algorithms for different interview problems
- Working around different types of advanced algorithms, such as brute-forced greedy algorithms, graph algorithms, etc.
- Working on real-world projects
2. Become a Data Engineer Nanodegree Program (Udacity)
Data Engineering I How to Become a Data Engineer (Udacity)
Get the skills you need to build production-ready data infrastructure, so you can advance your data engineering career.
Price
This course is available for $399 per month or $1,356 for 4-month access.
Duration
This course takes about 5 months to complete, with roughly 5-10 hours per week.
This course focuses on designing data models and takes the learning a step further as it’s aimed at those with intermediate experience in the field.
This data engineering class is taught by industry professionals so gaining real-world knowledge and expertise is guaranteed by the end of this course.
It requires some prior knowledge of Python and SQL so if you’re well-versed in them already, this course will be the perfect fit for you.
This course will make you proficient in several areas such as data modeling, spark, data lakes, data pipelines, etc.
What You Will Learn
- What are data warehouses and how to work around them
- Understanding data infrastructure
- Building cloud-based data warehouses
- How to work with massive datasets with the help of Spark
- How to use Apache Airflow to monitor data pipelines
- Tracking data lineage
- Building a portfolio
- How to build relational and no SQL data models
- Completing a capstone project
3. Data Streaming Nanodegree Program (Udacity)
What is Data Streaming? | Learn Data Streaming Online
Learn essential skills that will prepare you for the future of data engineering with this powerful online nanodegree program.
Price
This course is available for $399/month or $678 for 2-month access
Duration
You can give 5-10 hours per week to complete this course in 2 months.
With this course, you can build a solid understanding of data processing and master tools such as Apache Spark, Kafka Streaming, and Spark Streaming.
This course will feature real-world projects in collaboration with industry experts, meaning that you can taste how the corporate sector works way before actually working yourself.
Data streaming is one of the most in-demand skills and also has a lot of immensely well-paid opportunities so you can land yourself a good job within no time once you take this course.
If you’re a software or a data engineer, you will find that this course aims to upskill the areas you’re fluent in. The instructors will cover everything from fundamentals to API development, thereby ensuring a quality experience.
What You Will Learn
- Fundamentals of Stream Processing
- Understanding the Apache Kafka ecosystem
- What are data schemas
- How to build a real-time analytics application
- How to consume and process data
- Creating DataFrames
- How to visually inspect a data sink
Check out our Udacity review to learn more.
4. Introduction to Data Engineering (Coursera)
Price
Get started for free or $49/month for full course access & certification upon completion
Duration
You get 3 options to complete this course:
- 1 month: 20+ hours/week
- 3 months: 15 hours/week
- 6 months: 8 hours/week
If you’re just starting out and have no idea about how data engineering works, you might want to take a look at this course because it promises to introduce all the core concepts, along with explaining the needful tools.
It also briefly touches upon the data engineering ecosystem and its components. Studying this topic is highly beneficial because it prepares you for different career paths related to data engineering.
The best part about this course is that it has hands-on labs which help you in creating an IBM Cloud Lite account.
It also is linked to multiple programs which you can direct to after completing this course, meaning that the learning never stops and you keep on progressing!
What You Will Learn
- Basic skills required for data engineering
- An in-depth study of the lifecycle of data engineering
- Role of data scientists and data analysts in the data ecosystem
- Understanding data engineering technologies
- How to summarize different concepts
- Role of data engineers
- How to use big data processing tools
- Performance monitoring
- What are security, governance, and compliance
5. Data Engineering – ETL, Web Scraping, Big Data, SQL, Power BI (Udemy)
Price
Regularly $49.99 (price may vary)
Duration
The entire course is based on 12.5 hours of on-demand videos.
This beginner-level course focuses on studying ETL, which basically is a data pipeline used to gather data from multiple sources or formats and shift them to different data stores. It also covers skills such as SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT).
The course is based on 134 lectures which have 5-10 min long videos on average. The short duration means that you can squeeze them into your schedule without any hassle and still complete the course in less than a couple of days.
It also has a certificate of completion and 11 downloadable resources which you can access forever!
What You Will Learn
- How to install Visual Studio and SQL server data tools
- How to create a new SQL Server Integration Services Project
- How to implement ETL Process and testing SSIS Package
- Performing different database operations
- How to use Power BI for Data Modelling
- Using Power BI for cleaning and transforming data
- Studying the concepts of Big Data
- How to use web scraping for extracting data
6. Data Engineer with Python (Datacamp)
Price
Get started free, full access with plans starting at $25/month
Duration
The total duration of this course sums up to 73 hours.
Love working with Python? This course is for you! In this course, you will learn many things along with constantly improving your proficiency in Python. The course has a total of 21 lectures, each being a couple of hours long and taught by different instructors; meaning that if you don’t like a teacher, you’d only have to put up with him/her for a short time, until the next lecture comes in.
The teaching methodologies primarily focus on making your programming languages as stronger as ever, so that you have a whole set of skills and tools up your sleeve which help you navigate your way easily, even after the course has ended. These languages include Shell, SQL, and Scala; mostly used for creating pipelines and building databases. If you already have a fundamental knowledge of Python and SQL, this course can be a great place to learn their advanced levels!
What You Will Learn
- How to add Cloud and Big data tools to your data engineering toolkit
- Configuring schedules
- How to run pipelines
- Understanding scripting and process skills
- How to wrangle data
- How to acquire data from systems such as CSV, files, APIs, etc.
- How to write codes and make them execute quickly
- Unix Command Line
- How to write unit tests
7. Data Engineering with AWS Machine Learning (Pluralsight)
Price
Get access to this course and others for $29 per month (or $16.58/month when billed annually). Try Pluralsight free for 10 days. See our Pluralsight pricing guide or our Pluralsight review for more info.
Duration
This course can be completed in approximately 2 hours and 54 mins.
Want to learn the art of data engineering in just a matter of hours? Your search ends here! This advanced-level course focuses on AWS machine Learning and briefly discusses all the steps involved in data storage. Because of its duration, this course becomes a perfect fit for people who are busy with alternate careers or other engagements because you just need a couple of hours, and then boom! You’ll have enough knowledge to move forward as a data engineer.
The entire course is based on 12 videos that are typically just 15-30 mins long and also discusses an important data transformation at the end of the course.
What You Will Learn
- Understanding a Machine Learning Solution and what data characteristics should be considered while doing so
- A brief insight into AWS repositories, ingestion services, and transformation services
- Refining data stores
- What are Typical Data Flow Architectures on AWS
- Data Storage options and Database options
- How to use Data warehouses and Data Lakes
- Streaming Data Ingestion Solutions
- AWS Glue and how it works
- Transforming data with the help of Apache Spark, Serverless AWS Glue, etc.
- Understanding Amazon EMR and its importance
8. Professional Certificate in Data Engineering (edX)
Price
$39/month after 7-day free trial
Duration
This course has a total duration of 1 year and 2 months, with an estimated 3-4 hours per week.
This expert-level program has about 12 courses and as you may have garnered from its title, it takes things to an advanced level and gears you up for the professional world. The curriculum is tailored to take you right from the basics to become a master in the field. The program is self-paced which means that you can pursue a full-fledge professional certification without having to give up on your current commitments.
The extensive knowledge and practical experience gained from this data engineering course are going to help you get job-ready, and also enable you to constantly upgrade your portfolio. The best part is that you don’t need to have any prior knowledge for this course, which means that this can be just the right way for you to become an aspiring data engineer.
What You Will Learn
- Cloud-based relational databases
- Python, Bash, and SQL
- NoSQL database basics
- Hadoop and Spark basics
- How to process Big Data with Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark
- Bash, Airflow, and Kafka
- How to implement all the learnings in a capstone project
See our edX review to learn more.
A Final Word on Taking Data Engineering Classes Online
In an increasingly digital world, data is becoming more and more important. As a result, there is a growing demand for professionals who are able to effectively manage and manipulate data.
Data engineering is a field that focuses on the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of systems that collect, store, and process data.
The skills learned in data engineering are highly sought-after by employers in a variety of industries.
As data continues to become more central to the operation of businesses and organizations, the demand for data engineers is only going to increase. Learning data engineering is a great way to ensure that you will always be in demand.
Have any questions about our guide to the best online data engineering courses? Share them by commenting below.