Turns terabytes of test and flight signals into engineering answers.
The work
Every test generates far more data than anyone can read. Flight data engineers build the pipelines, tooling and analysis that get from raw channels to the one plot that settles the argument.
A typical day
- 01Build ingestion and processing pipelines for test data
- 02Write analysis tools engineers actually use
- 03Validate data quality and flag bad channels
- 04Present findings to people who were not in the control room
How people get in
- Engineering or computing degree
Broad entry, and one of the easiest fields to demonstrate with a portfolio.
How it unfolds
- DegreeComputer science, engineering or physics, with a genuine interest in the domain.
- Years 1-3Pipelines and tooling. Getting telemetry from a vehicle into something usable.
- Years 4-8Owning the data platform an engineering organisation runs on.
- LaterPlatform architect, or into analysis and decision support.
Is there a job in it
- Employed now
- 1,895,500
- Projected change
- +15% by 2034
- Openings a year
- 129,200
Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers · US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024 wages and 2024–34 projections.
The nearest published occupation. Data engineering is not separated out in the Handbook.
The hard parts
The data is messy in ways that are specific to the vehicle and nobody has documented. You will spend more time on ingestion and reconciliation than on anything interesting, and the value of the work is only visible when it is missing.
What you would need
- Python
- Signal processing
- Databases
- Visualisation
- Median pay
- $133,080
- Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers, May 2024. US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Typical education
- Bachelor's in engineering, computer science, physics or statistics
- Routes in
- Degree, Licence or certification
- Field
- Technology