How to Become a Data Engineer with AI in 2026

I'm Chris

12 years ago, I was a SQL developer making $65k.

Today, I'm a Data Engineer at Meta making $300k—building pipelines that drive $20M+ business decisions.

Here's how I got here:

Started in healthcare (SQL, backend systems).

Moved to Bank of America (backend applications at scale).

Kaiser Permanente (migrated 600+ Crystal Reports to Power BI).

Meta (data pipelines + AI infrastructure for billions of users).

3 years ago, everything changed when I worked with Data Scientists on a large-scale AI project. That's when I dove deep into LLMs, Hugging Face, LangChain, and vector databases.

Now I build the infrastructure that powers AI at Meta.

And I help others do the same.

Through Stackle, I teach aspiring data engineers how to go from $65k analyst to $150k+ DE in 6 months—without wasting years like

I also mentor startup founders on data + AI pr