ETL Developer

Job Duties
ETL developers are responsible for designing and creating the data warehouse and all related extraction, transformation and load of data functions in the company. After the groundwork has been laid, developers also must test their designs to ensure the system runs smoothly. Furthermore, developers must be experts at taking a big-picture view of a company's data situation. A skill set that many employers look for is called data modeling. This means developers need to be able to read, analyze and digest what a business wants to accomplish with its data, and design the best possible ETL process around those goals. Database designs take on many forms, including star and snowflake schemas.

ETL Developer Personality Traits
Though the role of ETL developer requires someone with a broad technical knowledge, it also requires someone with a good set of communication skills and an analytical mind. Since the ETL developer is responsible for leading an IT team as it builds the data warehouse, he must be able to communicate goals and instructions in a clear and efficient manner. In addition, developers frequently work with the business side of the company to determine the best course of action when designing the system. This means the developer needs to be able to listen to and interpret what the business side wants to see accomplished, discuss details in an easy-to-understand way, and then translate it all into nuts-and-bolts technical output.