Data Platform Engineer Learned Technical Skills for Free

Name: Bartosz Turkowyd (he/him)

PhD: Microbiology, University of Marburg, 2019

What is your current job?

I am a Data Platform Engineer for Lexware Office in Freiburg, Germany.

My job entails the design, development and maintenance of the data analytics platform within our company. I build the most optimal infrastructure to simplify our data analytics teams to perform their analysis.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

My current job allows, and in many cases even encourages, self development. It is included within the working time, thus it allows me to have a healthy work-life balance. My current job is pretty much stressless.

What is the most important skill you developed or experience you had during your PhD that now helps you in your current position?

Learning programming and software engineering/development. Also, as I have to communicate with other teams in the company, presentation skills come also handy.

How did you build the skills necessary for your current role?

Speaking of programming and software skills, it was mostly free videos on Youtube. It is an extremely useful platform if you know what to search for and what you are looking for. In terms of soft skills, it was mainly giving presentations at seminars and conferences.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

LinkedIn. From my personal experiences, I think this is the biggest worldwide platform listing open job positions.

PhD graduate ➡️ postdoctoral fellow ➡️ academic advisor ➡️ current job as data platform engineer

If someone is interested in a similar role, what would you recommend they start doing now to prepare?

First, look for job offers not for applying, but for checking and listing what skills are mostly required. With this it is easier to prepare a list of technologies and skills you have to learn to improve your chances when applying for jobs.

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

A lot of things in academia happen extremely slowly. Very often it was more talking than doing. At the same time, despite the lack of a dynamic environment it felt heavily under pressure. This, combined with a lost passion for doing basic life sciences, a rather hermetic, not inclusive environment in my last academic job, pushed me to look for a job where a substantial part of my duties would overlap with my interest.

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

1. If you are not sure if you wanna work in or outside academia, talk to people from both "worlds", to have a broader overview of pros and cons of both "worlds".

2. If talking to an experienced academic person, who wants to pursue this career until retirement, be more critical and skeptical to what they are saying about leaving academia. From my personal experience I got the impression, they see leaving academia as a failure. It is not a failure, do not feel guilty or like a disappointment.

You do what you think is best for you.

1. Plan your steps ahead. Define what kind of jobs are most interesting for you and try to narrow it down to have a clear path. Evaluate what skills you already have and can help you to get a new job and what skills you lack. Collect what skills you lack and try to learn them, if possible.

Are there any components of your identity you would like to share, including how they have impacted your journey?

I achieved everything in my career without making any crazy certificates, courses, having "friend of a friend" beforehand. All I achieved by myself. I am not saying it to flex, but to say, it is possible! :)

And for those interested, what was your main area of research?

I studied the intracellular processes in bacteria and archaea using advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques. I worked with different species, and studied different processes such a CRISPR, transcription, cell cycle processes. Collected images were analysed with a self-written Python code.