Education · 1 of 4

The path

A diploma or degree, a first IT (information technology) job, then the database team.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Math and computer science. Install a free database like PostgreSQL at home and learn SQL (the language for querying databases).

2. 2

   Diploma or degree

   2 to 5 years

   A 2 to 3 year college diploma (the British Columbia Institute of Technology runs a Computer Systems Technology diploma with a Database Systems option, and Ontario colleges have similar) or a 4-year computer science degree.

3. 3

   First job

   1 to 2 years

   Junior database analyst, IT (information technology) support, or developer. You learn how the business uses its data.

4. 4

   Certify

   Alongside work

   Microsoft's Azure Database Administrator exam, an Oracle certification, or an AWS (Amazon Web Services) database certificate, depending on what your employer runs.

5. 5

   DBA (database administrator)

   2 to 6 years after high school

   Owning backups, security, performance and upgrades for the systems everyone depends on.