As their influence grows, so do the challenges facing data engineers. A key one is dealing with greater complexity, as more advanced AI models elevate the importance of managing unstructured data and real-time pipelines. Another challenge is increasing workloads. Data engineers are being asked to do more than ever today, and that’s unlikely to change.
Key findings from the report include the following:
- Data engineers are essential to business. This is the view of 72% of surveyed technology leaders. This is a particularly strongly held view among executives in financial services and manufacturing companies.
- AI is changing everything data engineers do. According to our survey, the share of data engineers each day on AI projects has nearly doubled, from an average of 19 percent in 2023 to an average of 19 percent in 2025 to 37 percent. Respondents expect this figure to continue to grow to an average of 61% in two years. It is also contributing to the massive workload of the data engineer. Most respondents (77%) see growing heavy.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by the editorial staff of MIT Technology Review.
This content was researched, designed and created by human authors, editors, analysts, and writers. This includes writing the survey and collecting data for the survey. The AI ​​tools that have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed full human review.