Data Engineering training sites

Data Engineering is a hard field. It is similar to Software Engineering in its pace and where there are a lot of companies that all promise that their one class will teach you everything that you would ever need to know about Data Engineering.

While on this journey (and realistically I have only just begun and know it will never end) I came across a couple of sites that I think others reading this blog would really like. These are for the most part free (I will mention those that are not) and I found them useful to get at least a basic understanding of different tools.

I also do not receive any kind of affiliate links to promote these websites so I don't have a financial interest in promoting them.

From reading my blog you will see that I spend a lot of time in Azure space, but that is mostly because I work for a company that is an Azure shop. This does not mean that I will only use Azure (I plan to add posts about AWS and GCP as they come up) but do expect that a large part will.

With that being said here are the different sites that I found useful. I will update the below list as I come across different learning sites.

Free courses

1. Microsoft Data Engineer courses - these courses are offered by Microsoft and are free. While they won't make you an expert, they will definitely help you get a feel for the tool. Fair warning, most of the classes are text heavy, but in certain classes they do allow you to have a lab session using your Azure account.

Partially free courses

1. Pluralsight and Azure classes for free - I am a huge fan of Pluralsight and really like their videos. So naturally I checked out their Azure courses when they announced a partnership. As of this writing, Pluralsight will give a select number of free Azure courses. While that is a limitation it is still free courses and they are divided up based on roles.
1. If there are issues, the following page will help explain how to take advantage of the free courses: How do I access free courses through Microsoft Azure?

Paid courses

1. Integrating Data in Microsoft Azure - This course is very good about teaching you Azure Data Factory and some of the use cases that it can be used for. I enjoyed this course and the instructor was easy to follow. This course is not free though and you need to get a Pluralsight subscription.
2. Data Engineering, Big Data, and Machine Learning on GCP Specialization - This is a good course to give you an intro on some of the big data tools that GCP has. It allows you to do labs through a program called Qwiklabs where you follow instructions while they spin up resources for you. I enjoyed the course, although I felt like the learning curve was high (you should have a programming background to enjoy this course) and at the end it was focused way to much on ML and AI.