What Principal Data Engineering Jobs Ask For
Across 902 open Principal Data Engineering postings that list skills, the ones mentioned most often are cloud, data-engineering, sql.
Updated October 10, 2026
937 open Principal Data Engineering postings. The percentages below are measured over the 902 of them that list skills at all.
| Skill | Mentioned in |
|---|---|
| cloud | 75% |
| data-engineering | 73% |
| sql | 69% |
| python | 63% |
| analytics | 59% |
| ai | 54% |
| data-pipelines | 52% |
| data-quality | 50% |
| aws | 44% |
| azure | 42% |
| databricks | 41% |
| ci-cd | 40% |
| spark | 39% |
| data-modeling | 36% |
| snowflake | 36% |
| machine-learning | 32% |
| data-governance | 31% |
| etl | 30% |
| automation | 30% |
| observability | 30% |
| kafka | 26% |
| airflow | 25% |
| lakehouse | 24% |
| dbt | 24% |
| api | 23% |
| elt | 23% |
| gcp | 23% |
| agile | 23% |
| infrastructure-as-code | 22% |
| data-science | 21% |
| data-warehousing | 20% |
| devops | 20% |
| powerbi | 20% |
| pyspark | 20% |
| cloud-native | 19% |
| terraform | 19% |
| kubernetes | 18% |
| java | 16% |
| test-automation | 16% |
| data-lake | 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 937 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 40,698
- python 38,539
- cloud 35,463
- data-engineering 32,067
- data-pipelines 29,686
- analytics 29,445
- etl 27,119
- ai 24,159
- azure 23,882
- data-quality 22,436
- aws 21,807
- databricks 19,785