Data Pipeline Engineer

Data Pipeline Engineer

Expert data engineer specializing in ETL/ELT pipelines, streaming architectures, data warehousing, and modern data stack implementation.

Quick Start

• Identify sources - data formats, volumes, freshness requirements
• Choose architecture - Medallion (Bronze/Silver/Gold), Lambda, or Kappa
• Design layers - staging → intermediate → marts (dbt pattern)
• Add quality gates - Great Expectations or dbt tests at each layer
• Orchestrate - Airflow DAGs with sensors and retries
• Monitor - lineage, freshness, anomaly detection

Core Capabilities

| Capability | Technologies | Key Patterns |

|------------|--------------|--------------|

| Batch Processing | Spark, dbt, Databricks | Incremental, partitioning, Delta/Iceberg |

| Stream Processing | Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming | Watermarks, exactly-once, windowing |

| Orchestration | Airflow, Dagster, Prefect | DAG design, sensors, task groups |

| Data Modeling | dbt, SQL | Kimball, Data Vault, SCD |

| Data Quality | Great Expectations, dbt tests | Validation suites, freshness |

Architecture Patterns

Medallion Architecture (Recommended)

BRONZE (Raw)     → Exact source copy, schema-on-read, partitioned by ingestion
      ↓ Cleaning, Deduplication
SILVER (Cleansed) → Validated, standardized, business logic applied
      ↓ Aggregation, Enrichment
GOLD (Business)   → Dimensional models, aggregates, ready for BI/ML

Lambda vs Kappa

• Lambda: Batch + Stream layers → merged serving layer (complex but complete)
• Kappa: Stream-only with replay → simpler but requires robust streaming

Reference Examples

Full implementation examples in ./references/:

| File | Description |

|------|-------------|

| dbt-project-structure.md | Complete dbt layout with staging, intermediate, marts |

| airflow-dag.py | Production DAG with sensors, task groups, quality checks |

| spark-streaming.py | Kafka-to-Delta processor with windowing |

| great-expectations-suite.json | Comprehensive data quality expectation suite |

Anti-Patterns (10 Critical Mistakes)

1. Full Table Refreshes

Symptom: Truncate and rebuild entire tables every run

Fix: Use incremental models with is_incremental(), partition by date

2. Tight Coupling to Source Schemas

Symptom: Pipeline breaks when upstream adds/removes columns

Fix: Explicit source contracts, select only needed columns in staging

3. Monolithic DAGs

Symptom: One 200-task DAG running 8 hours

Fix: Domain-specific DAGs, ExternalTaskSensor for dependencies

4. No Data Quality Gates

Symptom: Bad data reaches production before detection

Fix: Great Expectations or dbt tests at each layer, block on failures

5. Processing Before Archiving

Symptom: Raw data transformed without preserving original

Fix: Always land raw in Bronze first, make transformations reproducible

6. Hardcoded Dates in Queries

Symptom: Manual updates needed for date filters

Fix: Use Airflow templating (e.g., ds variable) or dynamic date functions

7. Missing Watermarks in Streaming

Symptom: Unbounded state growth, OOM in long-running jobs

Fix: Add withWatermark() to handle late-arriving data

8. No Retry/Backoff Strategy

Symptom: Transient failures cause DAG failures

Fix: retries=3, retry_exponential_backoff=True, max_retry_delay

9. Undocumented Data Lineage

Symptom: No one knows where data comes from or who uses it

Fix: dbt docs, data catalog integration, column-level lineage

10. Testing Only in Production

Symptom: Bugs discovered by stakeholders, not engineers

Fix: dbt --target dev, sample datasets, CI/CD for models

Quality Checklist

Pipeline Design:

• [ ] Incremental processing where possible
• [ ] Idempotent transformations (re-runnable safely)
• [ ] Partitioning strategy defined and documented
• [ ] Backfill procedures documented

Data Quality:

• [ ] Tests at Bronze layer (schema, nulls, ranges)
• [ ] Tests at Silver layer (business rules, referential integrity)
• [ ] Tests at Gold layer (aggregation checks, trend monitoring)
• [ ] Anomaly detection for volumes and distributions

Orchestration:

• [ ] Retry and alerting configured
• [ ] SLAs defined and monitored
• [ ] Cross-DAG dependencies use sensors
• [ ] max_active_runs prevents parallel conflicts

Operations:

• [ ] Data lineage documented
• [ ] Runbooks for common failures
• [ ] Monitoring dashboards for pipeline health
• [ ] On-call procedures defined

Validation Script

Run ./scripts/validate-pipeline.sh to check:

• dbt project structure and conventions
• Airflow DAG best practices
• Spark job configurations
• Data quality setup

External Resources

• dbt Best Practices
• Airflow Best Practices
• Great Expectations Docs
• Delta Lake Guide
• Kafka Streams