The Insight Data Engineering Fellows Program is a full-time training fellowship that helps computer scientists and engineers transition to careers in data engineering. When Insight began in June 2012, the goal was to help recent graduates from quantitative academic fields break into the field of data science. In addition to emerging as leaders in the data science community, some of our Fellows with more technical backgrounds were hired on (and are now leading) data engineering teams at companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Microsoft.

As the program grew, it became clear that there was a strong demand for Fellows who could develop data infrastructures using the leading open source technologies like Hadoop and NoSQL databases. At the same time, there was a large community, from both industry and academic programs like computer science and electrical engineering, that have the core engineering skills and were eager to learn these tools. So, in June 2014 we launched the Insight Data Engineering program to help software engineers and recent graduates become leading data engineers at top-tier Silicon Valley tech companies.

In the first year of the program, we have run three successful sessions (with another one starting next week) and now have nearly 40 Insight Data Engineering alumni working at over twenty companies including Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Google, Intuit, Microsoft, Stitch Fix, and Yelp. Our Fellows have worked with industry leaders like Nathan Marz (creator of Apache Storm and Lambda Architecture) and the teams behind top open source projects to develop impressive projects using open source tools like Spark, Hadoop, Kafka and Cassandra.

As the program has grown, we have also seen an increasing demand for data engineers from top New York companies like Bloomberg, Capital One Labs, Foursquare, Dstillery, Mashable, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Tumblr, and exciting start-ups like Axon Vibe, Quirky, Sailthru, Smart Host, SumAll, and ZocDoc. Similarly, we have been hearing more and more from New York’s vibrant engineering community, with many engineers looking to transition to data roles while staying on the East Coast. So, in addition to our three Silicon Valley sessions, we have now opened applications for the Insight Data Engineering Fellows Program in New York City this September. This inaugural NYC session of Data Engineering will run alongside our existing Data Science Fellows Program in our new, expanded office in the Flatiron district of Manhattan.

Since the beginning, Insight’s mission has been to create an educational model that leverages the years of experience of scientists and engineers, to help them effectively transition to data roles in industry. Each session, the Insight alumni help the next batch of Fellows make that transition and make more and more significant contributions to the fields of data science and engineering. As we continue to expand to new cities and programs, we’re thrilled about the exciting possibilities and potential of the growing community of Insight Fellows.

Interested in transitioning to career in data engineering?

Find out more about the Insight Data Engineering Fellows Program in New York and Silicon Valley, apply today, or sign up for program updates.

Already a data scientist or engineer?

Find out more about our Advanced Workshops for Data Professionals. Register for two-day workshops in Apache Spark and Data Visualization, or sign up for workshop updates.