Data Pipeline Modernization

Replace fragile cron jobs and legacy ETL with declarative, observable pipelines on Airflow and dbt.

Operations-Heavy Businesses Growing Startups Analytics Departments

Overview

Most data teams reach a point where their pipelines are a tangle of shell scripts, Kettle transformations, and bespoke schedulers — each with its own retry behavior and observability story. Pipeline modernization replaces that surface area with a small set of well-understood primitives: Airflow for orchestration, dbt for transformation, and your warehouse of choice as the system of record.

Reference Architecture

flowchart TB
subgraph Before["Before"]
  direction LR
  Cron[Cron Jobs] --> Kettle[Kettle PDI]
  Kettle --> Shell[Shell Scripts]
  Shell --> Warehouse1[(Warehouse)]
end
subgraph After["After"]
  direction LR
  Airflow[Apache Airflow] --> Dbt[dbt Project]
  Dbt --> Warehouse2[(Warehouse)]
  Airflow -.-> Observability[Logs / Metrics / Alerts]
end
Before -.->|Phased Migration| After

Engagement Model

Modernizations are inherently risky — we run new and legacy pipelines in parallel and reconcile their output until the team has full confidence in the new system, then retire the old surface area in a single decisive cut-over.

What's Included

Current-state audit of existing jobs, dependencies, and failure modes
Target architecture and phased migration plan
Airflow DAG conventions and dbt project bootstrap
Incremental cut-over with parallel-run validation
Cost, latency, and reliability baselines after cut-over

Technologies

Apache Airflow
dbt
Snowflake
Databricks
Python
Kettle PDI

Related Services

ETL Consulting
Design, build, and modernize production-grade ETL pipelines that move data reliably across systems.
Analytics Engineering
Turn raw warehouse data into trusted, well-modeled datasets that analysts, executives, and downstream apps can rely on.
Data Integration Services
Connect disparate systems into a unified data ecosystem — APIs, streaming, master data, and cross-platform sync.

Ready to discuss your data pipeline modernization needs?

Schedule a Consultation