Just interests. My experience has been quite low-code, and a lot of things that can also chalk down to DBA or BA work. Obviously that is not always the case, you can create custom pipelines with python and integrate them with airflow, or custom anything really, but big company clients like well established software and low-code solutions to decrease complexity. Because of that most of my work is with ADF (a UI centered low to no code pipeline service for azure which I loathe) and SQLServer and data warehousing like synapse. It doesn't give me the satisfaction or creative flair i feel when doing api development and the like.

That's just me though, i know coworkers that love their work and i just don't get the same satisfaction, its up to personal preference.

Also as a note since its still a relatively novel field its real hit and miss with company structure and the work you do, a lot of places don't utilize their data engineers effectively i find.