Gambill Data Engineer Track · Path 03 — Sharpen

Close the gaps. On your schedule.

Sharpen is for working data engineers who "missed things along the way." Start with the self-diagnostic against the ten recurring gaps, then take individual modules or a pre-built bundle. Every unit stands alone and links straight to its lesson — no need to have done the earlier modules. The weekly live review is optional: bring anything you want to pressure-test.

Start here

Self-diagnostic — rate yourself 1–5 on each gap

Each gap maps to the modules that close it. Pick the ones you score low on; the module codes link to their lessons.

  1. G1 Can you explain why you built something the way you did? → M32 M34 M36
  2. G2 Do you choose grain deliberately? → M08 M09 M10 M11
  3. G3 Is overwrite ever your bronze strategy? → M15 M16
  4. G4 Do you have a real testing taxonomy? → M24 M25 M26
  5. G5 Could you dedup a composite key in a stream? → M23
  6. G6 Do manual workspace changes ever survive deploy? → M27 M28 M29
  7. G7 Can you read a Spark UI and act on it? → M17 M18 M19
  8. G8 Is governance designed in, or bolted on? → M21 M30
  9. G9 Can you defend an architecture, not just name tools? → M32
  10. G10 Can you narrate your work to a stakeholder? → M34 M35 M36
Pre-built bundles

Or grab a bundle

Eight curated gap-clusters. Each chip opens the real lesson week in the Launch phase pages.

Incremental & CDC Mastery

closes G3

Kill the full-refresh habit: watermarks, snapshots, backfills, idempotency.

Spark Performance & Cost

closes G7

Build the scale/shuffle instinct and know when tuning is actually worth it.

DQ, Testing & Observability

closes G4

Expectations, quarantine, reconciliation, and the full test taxonomy.

DevOps for Data

closes G6

Git → DABs → CI/CD with no manual drift and clean env promotion.

Governance & Security

closes G8

Unity Catalog design, RBAC, masking/hashing, PII/PHI, service identities.

Streaming Semantics

closes G5

Triggers, state, keys, idempotency — and why streaming is not real-time.

Architecture & Communication

closes G1 · G9 · G10

Choose and defend approaches; narrate the work to any audience.