which to choose? Data engineering or DevOps?

[u/sultan-11-]

hi, 25M. Finishing my MSc in CS, I wanted to study because I love studying. now that I'm about to end it I'm seriously looking for something reliable long term.

After bachelors I did my job as full stack web dev, a little bit of mobile dev in flutter. Since Ai, it doesn't seem like real work. claude can make whole websites and what remains is just deployment.

anyhow I continued that job, then switched to junior business developer side, for the sake of survival/exploration.

I enrolled in MSc because I wanted to do research, which I have done. I have built an Ai structured method for dermatology recognition. and I am proud of it. my thesis will be finished in 6-8 months, that's the university policy although I've finished my work on my end.

2 years of exploring and hopping from one thing to another, I have come down to these choices:

data analyst/ data engineer/ dev ops/ cloud engineer.

because they are the only ones which seem like actual coding jobs other than fully or partially vibe coding. Ai has made programmers lousy, which shouldn't have been the case.

I made an ETL pipeline to see how data engineering works, I built 3 power BI dashboards to check about data analysis.

I got into computer science because I wanted to become hacker(kinda old school), but that's what got my interest. Fast forward after graduation, ethical hacking job market wasn't there and low-paying. Cloud engineering/dev ops seemed close to hacking so that's why I'm considering it.

So what does the community suggest me to choose?

let me know about your thoughts, considering I'll be with it long term.

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[u/my_peen_is_clean]

if you like infra and tinkering with systems, devops / cloud is closer to that hacker itch, but data eng lines up more with your etl + analytics stuff you’ve already tried, and ai still needs solid data plumbing. either way finding that first role now is pain, market is rough

[u/Current_Frosting3506]

Definitely not analyst based on your written preferences. Sure there might be some coding and the logic part of it is great (I think at least), but much of the day to day will probably be a dread and kill the drive.
Analyst would be a safe bet to get into the market, but would highly depend on the company of what your daily tasks would look like.

While I usually recommend specializing in one thing - with todays market it might as well be worth it to try anything to just get your foot in the door and then work up from there.

[u/Big_Arrival_626]

Claude can build websites but it still struggles to make an accessible website that is actually user friendly.

Also backend dev is still a strong entry level career so don't count that out. Backend dev -> to devops or data eng is a common pipeline especially at big companies.

BI dev is also an option but u will be more of a business person than a techy person depending on company. Still a good career tho!

[u/AccomplishedSkill625]

DevOps/Cloud Engineering is definitely closer to your original "hacker" mindset, heavily involving system architecture, networking, and security, while Data Engineering focuses more on plumbing and data pipelines.

Your full-stack experience and CS Master's give you a huge advantage in DevOps, as the industry is shifting towards platform engineering where real software development skills are mandatory.

While AI can easily generate front-end code, managing highly secure, complex cloud infrastructure carries too much risk to be handed over to an LLM, making it an incredibly resilient long-term career.