We created a "Data Engineer" job (inspired by Amazon's name for the position) for precisely that purpose. The core schema behind Zalora (we sell clothes online)

We created a "Data Engineer" job (inspired by Amazon's name for the position) for precisely that purpose. The core schema behind Zalora (we sell clothes online) had over 5,000 tables and well, some of the stuff could definitely be improved. There were so many upstream issues we decided to make fixing them full time work (working with both the developers, and the end users like the people buying the products to put on the site). I can't comment too much on it publicly but well, it looks like it was worth it. I definitely agree that there is a split between statisticians, and "data engineers" in both personality and interests, and you should have both on your "data science"/"big data"/whatever they call analysts these days team. It is however bloody hard to convince upstairs to pay a lot of money for the work! (as with anything "without deliverables", really)