Skip to content
Path 03 · Senior+

Build the platformother DEs build on.

Multi-tenant Airflow, cost attribution, self-service tooling, SLAs. The work that gets you promoted to staff.

See the path
After this path

What you'll actually be able to do.

Not "you'll know about Airflow." What you'll ship, debug, and defend in an interview.

You’ll be the person who

  • Design a multi-tenant Airflow platform from scratch
  • Attribute cost per team and make it visible
  • Build self-service tooling that analysts don't hate
  • Run incident response across 50+ pipelines
  • Get promoted to staff within 2 years

And the market pays you for

Run multi-tenantNot single-team Airflow
Attribute costPer team, per DAG
Ship self-serviceThat actually works
Own SLAsAcross the org
System architecture

The system you'll build by the end.

A production reference architecture — not a toy demo. Every node maps to a course or project in this path.

01 · Control
Terraform
GitHub Actions
02 · Platform
Airflow on K8s
Spark ops
03 · Tenants
Team A
Team B
Team C
04 · Observe
Datadog
Cost attr.
Lineage
05 · Govern
IAM
Secrets
RBAC
Orchestration: Airflow + K8sEvery node → a course + project
Your path

From week one to capstone.

A realistic 5-stage timeline. Go faster if you already have pieces; slower if you're brand new.

  1. 01Week 1–4

    Batch refresher

    Review Airflow/dbt at depth

    Study
    airflowdbtsparkwarehouse-internals
  2. 02Week 5–10

    Streaming depth

    Kafka, Flink, exactly-once

    Study
    streaming-fundamentalskafka-streamsflink-streamingevent-design
    Ship
    flink-fraud-detectionstreamcart-analyticsstreamguard-anomaly-detection
  3. 03Week 11–16

    Platform core

    Terraform, K8s, multi-tenant Airflow

    Study
    cloud-fundamentalscloud-infrastructureiceberg
    Ship
    iceberg-lakehouseicelake-commerce-projectmodern-data-stack
  4. 04Week 17–21

    Cost + observability

    Attribution, tracing, SLO dashboards

    Study
    data-observabilitycost-optimizationgovernance
    Ship
    dataguard-observabilitycloud-cost-optimizationdata-governance-contractsschema-evolution-contracts
  5. 05Week 22–24

    Ship capstone

    Multi-tenant platform with RBAC + cost

    Study
    system-design
    Ship
    cicd-data-platform
Capstone project

One project, endlessly talkable.

Every path ends with a flagship capstone you'll ship, write up, and walk through in every interview loop.

P12 · CapstoneCI/CD data platform

The capstone that gets you to staff.

AirflowKubernetesTerraformVaultDatadog
Plus projects
cloud-cost-optimizationdata-access-controlschema-evolution-contracts

What you’ll ship

  • 01Airflow on K8s with per-team namespaces
  • 02Cost attribution via resource tagging
  • 03SLA dashboards per team per DAG
  • 04RBAC + secrets mgmt via Vault
  • 05Self-service DAG onboarding in <1 hour
Proof

Questions you'll confidently answer.

These are real interview questions for Data Platform Engineer roles. If you can answer all four with a story from your capstone, you're ready.

Q1

How would you attribute cost across 12 teams sharing one warehouse?

Q2

Walk me through on-call for a multi-tenant Airflow

Q3

Design the migration path from single-team to platform

Q4

How do you make self-service tooling analysts actually use?

Why this matters: Most courses let you hide behind passive video-watching. ai-de projects force you into the exact failure modes interviewers probe for — so when you sit in the interview, you’ve already lived the answer.
Skills · syllabus

Stack you'll learn.

Not memorized — operated. Each tool is taught inside a project, not an isolated lecture.

KubernetesTerraformAirflowObservabilityIAMCost toolingVaultDatadogSRE
Not quite the right fit? Explore the other 4 paths
The core pathCore Data EngineerGo Fastest-growing roleAI Data EngineerGo Closest to the businessAnalytics / Product Data EngineerGo Senior+ AI infraAI Platform EngineerGo
Your move

Start building your first system — today.

Module 01 is free. No card. Ship something real this weekend.

Compare all 5 paths
Press Cmd+K to open