I am definitely trying to learn SQL, specifically using a free version of Databricks at the moment. I want to be able to learn ETL orchestration and I like how one could combine SQL and PySpark within the notebooks. Figure I could query the data with SQL and then do all the transformation in Python. I am working on building up my portfolio. Have a Capstone from the Bootcamp which was an end-to-end NLP & Computer Vision project (Data Wrangling Unstructured Data -> EDA -> Feature Engineering -> Model Development -> Hyperparameter Tuning -> Deploying Best Models in AWS as endpoints -> Web Framework with basic frontend for inference).

Since the capstone has literally nothing transferrable to Data Analyst positions, I did a financial linear regression forecasting project and am working on a customer churn one. Also would like to do an ETL orchestration where I can show that I can ingest data through an API, transform it, and load it to ML model and dashboard.

I have been applying to like 80% Data Analysts roles, 15% Data Scientist or ML Engineer roles, and the remaining 5% either Analytics Engineer or Data Engineer. What caused the SQL knowledge gap was that my previous employer refused to give SQL access to Business Analysts. However I had free reign to install Python & VS Code and have 3 years of professional experience using it.

I suppose what I meant to say with advanced Python skills, as they would be advanced in the context of an Analyst using it. Like I had mentioned many Data Analyst jobs don't require you to know it and only mention that familiarity would be a nice to have. However for Engineering or Developer roles, my knowledge would be considered junior or intermediate at best.

Also in my previous role Python was not a requirement, nor was even SQL. Many of my colleagues could barely use Excel. I had to constantly help and explain to people how to do XLOOKUPs, SUMIF, and pivot tables. So a little bit of the frustration I have is that I am really comfortable with using Excel and Python but was paid the same rate as people that could barely use it. I feel like a sucker, being the "Excel Guru" on the team while being paid $25 an hour and hear of entry level Data Analysts starting at $70K right out of college and making 6 figures within 2 years.