The "Too Technical" Fix Guide for SDEs → DE

"Too technical." The feedback that sounds like a compliment and still costs you the offer.

You're a Software Development Engineer moving into Data Engineering or ML Engineering roles. You know more about systems than most DEs you've interviewed against. And somehow, every loop ends with feedback that makes no sense: too technical, too in the weeds, couldn't see the data thinking. The job is technical. How can you be too much of the thing they're hiring for?

Here's the decode: "too technical" almost never means what it sounds like. It means the interviewer asked a systems question and got an implementation answer. That's a narrow, specific translation problem, not a competence problem, and it's fixable in an afternoon.

What's inside: The "Too Technical" Decoder (five specific feedback variants and what each flags), the Implementation-to-Systems Reframe (a before/after method), Resume Bullet Reframe Examples (four worked conversions), and the Data-Thinking Self-Check (five pre-interview questions).

Who this is for: SDE, 3-7 YOE, actively interviewing for DE or MLE roles, getting "too technical" feedback and not sure what it means.

Who it's not for: you're already a services-company DE (that's the core Services-to-Product Transition Kit), or you haven't gotten this specific feedback yet.