Can anyone help me understand the difference between the two? My sense is the former is more technical than the latter and involves more coding? Note that my background isn’t in CS
Yes you are pretty much correct. A data engineer develops, tests and maintains architectures whereas the data scientist mostly cleans and organizes data. The data engineer often will need to implement things that would improve data reliability and efficiency and that the architecture supports the needs of data scientists and the business as a whole. Data scientists implement models and methods to prepare data for prediction or whatever the task is. A key difference is data scientists often have to present their results to stakeholders so requires good communication skills. Given that your background is not in CS, perhaps data scientist is a better choice for you as of now.
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