What Principal Data Engineering Jobs Ask For
Across 763 open Principal Data Engineering postings that list skills, the ones mentioned most often are cloud, data-engineering, sql.
Updated November 3, 2026
780 open Principal Data Engineering postings. The percentages below are measured over the 763 of them that list skills at all.
| Skill | Mentioned in |
|---|---|
| cloud | 79% |
| data-engineering | 69% |
| sql | 65% |
| python | 64% |
| analytics | 61% |
| ai | 58% |
| data-pipelines | 52% |
| aws | 48% |
| data-quality | 44% |
| azure | 43% |
| ci-cd | 43% |
| machine-learning | 39% |
| spark | 38% |
| data-governance | 38% |
| databricks | 37% |
| data-modeling | 36% |
| snowflake | 35% |
| observability | 33% |
| etl | 33% |
| automation | 32% |
| kafka | 29% |
| gcp | 27% |
| lakehouse | 27% |
| dbt | 25% |
| airflow | 24% |
| api | 24% |
| elt | 24% |
| infrastructure-as-code | 23% |
| cloud-native | 21% |
| data-science | 20% |
| devops | 20% |
| data-warehousing | 20% |
| pyspark | 19% |
| data-lake | 19% |
| terraform | 19% |
| big-data | 18% |
| java | 17% |
| agile | 16% |
| test-automation | 16% |
| scala | 15% |
"Mentioned in" counts postings that name the skill anywhere — including as a nice-to-have — so treat it as the ceiling, not the bar.
Browse 780 open Principal Data Engineering jobs →
Across all Data Engineering levels
Most Data Engineering postings never state a level. This wider list covers them too.
- sql 37,551
- python 34,758
- cloud 32,101
- data-engineering 30,136
- data-pipelines 28,862
- analytics 26,703
- etl 25,202
- ai 21,717
- azure 21,526
- data-quality 20,587
- aws 19,492
- ci-cd 18,656