Subreddit Marketing Guide

How to Market on r/dataengineering

A community for data engineers building data pipelines, warehouses, and platforms. Discussions on ETL, data modeling, orchestration, and the modern data stack. From Spark to dbt to Airflow and beyond.

280Ksubscribers
1Kactive now
Moderate Self-Promo Policy
Subscribers
280K
Total community members
Active Now
1K
Users currently online
Post Lifespan
24-48 hours
How long posts stay relevant
Peak Times
weekday morning-est
Best time to post

r/dataengineering Rules & Self-Promotion Policy

Understanding the rules is critical for successful marketing. Here's what you need to know about r/dataengineering.

Moderate Self-Promotion Policy

Self-promotion is allowed in context. Lead with value, not your product. Promotional posts may be removed.

Community Rules

  • 1No job postings or recruitment spam
  • 2Include context in questions
  • 3No low-effort content
  • 4Be respectful and constructive
  • 5Use descriptive titles

How to Write for r/dataengineering

Technical and practical. The community appreciates battle-tested insights from production systems. Share what worked, what didn't, and why. Tool opinions should be backed by experience.

Best Practices for r/dataengineering

Maximize your impact by understanding when, what, and how to post.

Best Times to Post

  • Weekday Morning Est
  • Tuesday Wednesday Est
  • Thursday Afternoon Est

Posts stay relevant for about 24-48 hours

Content That Works

  • Data stack architecture case studies
  • Tool comparisons with production experience
  • Open-source data tool announcements
  • Pipeline optimization stories

Common Flairs

DiscussionHelpCareerEducationMeme/Humor

Who's Here

Data engineers, analytics engineers, and platform engineers working with the modern data stack. Many work with tools like Snowflake, Databricks, dbt, and Airflow. Value practical experience over theoretical discussion.

Common Mistakes on r/dataengineering

Avoid these pitfalls that get marketers banned or ignored.

Promoting tools without production context

Data engineers have seen too many tools that work in demos but fail at scale. They need real evidence.

Instead

Share production usage: "Running at [scale] for [duration]. Here's what we hit and how we solved it."

Ignoring operational concerns

Pipelines need to run reliably. Cool architecture that's hard to maintain isn't impressive.

Instead

Address operability: "Monitoring: [approach]. Alerting: [setup]. On-call burden: [assessment]."

Data stack absolutism

The modern data stack is fragmented. Claiming any one approach is universally best invites pushback.

Instead

Acknowledge context: "This works for [scale/use case]. For [different case], I'd consider [alternative]."

Vendor lock-in without acknowledgment

Data engineers worry about portability. Proprietary-only solutions need to justify the lock-in.

Instead

Address portability: "Uses Spark under the hood, so migrating is [realistic/approach]."

Focusing on flashy tech over boring reliability

The community values pipelines that just work. New tech is exciting but reliability matters more.

Instead

Lead with reliability: "Running 6 months with 99.9% uptime. The boring parts that made this work."

Post Formats That Work on r/dataengineering

These content formats consistently perform well in this community.

Stack Architecture

Example Format

""Our data stack: [diagram]. Scale: [data volume/users]. What works, what we'd change, and total cost of ownership.""

Why It Works

Concrete architecture. Real scale. Honest assessment. Cost context.

Tool Migration

Example Format

""Migrated from [old] to [new]. Timeline: [duration]. Challenges: [list]. Result: [improvements]. Would we do it again?""

Why It Works

Real migration experience. Honest about challenges. Retrospective value.

Open Source Announcement

Example Format

""Built [tool] to solve [data engineering problem]. How it works: [approach]. Compared to [alternatives]: [benchmarks]. Apache 2.0 licensed.""

Why It Works

Clear problem solved. Technical depth. Benchmarks. Open source.

Related Communities & Use Cases

Expand your reach with similar subreddits and see who uses r/dataengineering for marketing.

Who Should Target r/dataengineering

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about marketing on r/dataengineering

With production context, yes. The community wants to see tools working at scale, not just in demos. Share architecture decisions, operational challenges solved, and real performance data.
Stack architecture posts, tool migration stories, and production war stories. The community values battle-tested experience and honest assessments over theoretical discussions.
If you serve data teams, yes. Many members influence data tool purchasing. Build credibility through valuable technical content before promotional posts.
Very technical. Include scale metrics, architecture decisions, operational considerations, and cost analysis. The audience builds production data systems and expects depth.
dbt, Airflow, Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Kafka, and Fivetran are common topics. Tool comparisons and migration experiences generate significant discussion.
Yes, cost is a major factor in data stack decisions. Total cost of ownership discussions, including hidden costs and scaling implications, are valuable.

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