If data is the bloodstream of my products, then yes—I'm a data engineer when the job demands.

I design events, clean pipelines, and model data so decisions are obvious. Kafka or queues, warehouses, metrics that matter, dashboards that people actually open. That's data engineering in service of product.

I'm not obsessed with tool wars. I care about correctness, latency, cost, and comprehension. If the team can't read the metrics, the data is cosplay.

Track fewer, better events. Keep schemas explicit. Backfill like a surgeon. Automate QA. Explain the numbers in plain English.