When is a data engineer needed?

I believe, that not every company is in need of data engineers. His skills are mostly required if the company either:

• has already a product that is fully web-based and therefore data-driven
• the need or desire to analyze lots of data (Volume) from any kind of sources (Variety) and fast (Velocity) to get the insights (Value and Veracity) (see more about the Three Vs - volume, velocity and variety)

References: Data Engineering