There’s a truism in the data community that companies always make the mistake of hiring an analyst before a data engineer. I understand why this is such a common thing to say—many companies start hiring data teams without the right tools or support systems to set them up for success, and early data hires often end up doing a lot of data engineering work whether they want to or not. Running analysis and developing metrics without well-curated datasets and data models is like hiking a rocky trail. It can certainly done, but you could go further with less effort if you just had a paved path.
If you build it, they will come. To really play ball, you need a ballpark