Your first week as a data engineer

Goal: You understand what data systems you'll work with, how pipelines are structured, and what to focus on first.

What you'll do at Stratorys

You build and maintain data pipelines, write SQL for analysis and transformation, and work with both row-oriented and columnar databases. You ensure data is reliable, well-structured, and available for the rest of the team.

Your first-week priorities

Day	Focus	Action
1	Environment	Complete laptop setup and accounts
2	Security + first PR	Complete security baseline and open your first PR
3	Data landscape	Get access to databases, explore schemas, understand what data exists
4	Pair	Shadow a teammate on a pipeline task or data review
5	First real task	Pick a small data task from your task tracker and start working on it

Repos to clone

Ask your team lead which repositories to start with. Clone them all into a consistent directory:

mkdir -p ~/Lab/github.com/stratorys

cd ~/Lab/github.com/stratorys

git clone git@github.com:stratorys/<repo>.git

Get access to databases

Ask your team lead for credentials to:

• PostgreSQL (operational data)
• Any analytical / data warehouse systems

Store credentials in 1Password, never in files.

Journeys to start

Work through these in order, at your own pace:

1. Git from zero - if you're not comfortable with Git yet
2. Linux commands - terminal fluency is essential
3. Data fundamentals - SQL, data structures, row vs columnar databases

Questions to ask your team lead

• Which databases and schemas should I explore first?
• What's the current data pipeline architecture?
• Where do I find existing data transformations?
• Are there any "good first issue" data tasks in your task tracker?
• What monitoring exists for pipeline health?