Recorded at DataEngConf SF17 in April, 2017. With more than a decade of Big Data experience now behind us, we’ll talk with a few veterans from the front lines about what skills mattered — and what didn't — on the first data engineering teams at Silicon Valley’s data-intensive start-ups. This will be a must-watch panel for those looking to build out a data-engineering function or get into the field themselves. We’ll explore the build vs. buy debate, looking at which classes of software teams hand-rolled, borrowed (and extended) from open-source projects, or bought - and discuss how that mix is changing. We’ll learn about the hardest parts of data pipelines and the data stack to build. And we’ll highlight the necessary skills that make data engineers different than data scientists.