The BA advantage that most people underestimate
Data engineers spend a lot of their time building systems that support specific business needs — dashboards that need to refresh daily, pipelines that feed analyst reports, warehouses structured around how the business actually asks questions about its data. Understanding those business needs from the start is something that most technically-trained engineers have to learn on the job.
As a BA, you already speak both languages — you can translate business requirements into technical specifications, and you understand why the data matters beyond the pipeline. Companies that have tried to hire purely technical engineers who lack business understanding know the problems this creates: systems built to spec that do not actually solve the right problem.
The technical gap — and how big it actually is
Most BAs who make this transition find the learning curve less steep than expected, particularly if they have already used SQL for reporting work. Python is the main new addition, but learning Python for data engineering purposes — scripting, file handling, ETL logic, API calls — is much more accessible than learning Python for software development. You are not building applications; you are automating data workflows.
A focused three-to-five month program that goes from SQL depth through Python, warehousing, ETL, and cloud fundamentals is enough to get to interview-ready. The business context you bring means you often stand out against purely technical candidates who need to catch up on the business side after they join.