Data Engineering: Transforming The Backbone Of Modern Data Solutions

Mukul Garg is the Head of Support Engineering at PubNub , which powers apps for virtual work, play, learning and health. In my journey through data engineering, one of the most remarkable shifts I’ve witnessed occurred during the integration of real-time data pipelines for a fast-growing SaaS platform. Initially, our data team was bogged down with batch processing and delayed analytics, which severely hindered decision-making speed.

However, when we implemented a real-time data architecture using technologies like Apache Kafka and cloud-native solutions, we were able to process and analyze data on the fly, dramatically increasing our business agility. This experience solidified my belief in the transformative power of modern data engineering. This year, data engineering will have become the backbone of every digital transformation strategy.



With the growing complexity of data sources and increasing demand for real-time analytics, companies are adopting cutting-edge technologies to build robust, scalable and efficient data infrastructures. Data engineering today plays a pivotal role in unlocking the true value of data across industries, allowing businesses to harness their data in real time, improve decision-making and create personalized experiences for customers. Several companies are at the forefront of implementing advanced data engineering solutions that set benchmarks for the industry: • Netflix’s Real-Time Data Pipelines: Netflix utilizes a data architecture that combines both batch and stream processing methods to handle massive quantities of data.

This approach balances latency, throughput and fault tolerance by using batch processing for comprehensive views and real-time stream processing for immediate data insights. • Uber’s Predictive Analytics Engine: Uber has developed a sophisticated predictive analytics engine to optimize route planning and demand forecasting. By using real-time data processing, Uber can anticipate surge pricing and provide drivers with the most efficient routes in real time.

• S hopify’s Automated Data Warehouse: Shopify recently moved to an automated data warehouse powered by cloud-native solutions like dbt (data build tool). This has allowed them to integrate sales, inventory and customer data more efficiently, resulting in quicker data-driven insights and better decision-making. • Airbnb’s Data Mesh Architecture: Airbnb has embraced a data mesh approach to scale its data infrastructure, decoupling data storage and processing across multiple teams.

This approach enables each team to take ownership of its own data domain while using shared infrastructure, improving data discoverability and reducing bottlenecks. Modern data engineering offers several key benefits that have become essential for businesses today: • Real-Time Analytics: With the advent of real-time data pipelines, companies can process and analyze data as it comes in. This has allowed businesses like Uber and Netflix to offer more timely, relevant insights and optimize decision-making in real time.

• Scalability: Data engineering solutions today can scale horizontally, handling increasing volumes of data without a corresponding increase in cost. Cloud data platforms like Snowflake and Google BigQuery are prime examples of scalable solutions that allow organizations to scale operations as they grow. • Data Democratization: The rise of self-service data tools such as dbt and Looker has democratized data access, enabling teams across organizations to leverage data without needing deep technical expertise.

This leads to faster decision-making across departments. • Cost Efficiency: Cloud-native data solutions enable companies to optimize storage and compute costs by only paying for what they use, making it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to manage their data infrastructure without heavy upfront investments. While the benefits are clear, there are also challenges in integrating modern data engineering solutions.

• Data Quality: Ensuring that the data being ingested into the system is clean, consistent and accurate is one of the most challenging aspects of data engineering. Poor data quality can lead to incorrect insights and missed opportunities. • Data Privacy And Compliance: As data privacy regulations like GDPR continue to evolve, organizations need to ensure that their data pipelines comply with these regulations.

This requires robust data governance and regular audits to maintain compliance. • Integration Complexity: Integrating multiple data sources, especially from legacy systems, can be complex. Data engineering teams must ensure seamless integration while maintaining the integrity of the data and ensuring minimal latency.

• Maintaining Real-Time Performance: As real-time data processing becomes more prevalent, maintaining low-latency pipelines becomes increasingly difficult. Ensuring high throughput and minimal delays, especially with large datasets, requires careful infrastructure management. In an age where data is the new currency, ensuring data integrity and security has never been more important.

Implementing secure access controls, encrypted data pipelines and comprehensive monitoring systems can help safeguard data from potential breaches. Companies like Shopify and Airbnb are taking proactive steps to ensure their data infrastructures are both secure and resilient, using advanced data masking and encryption techniques to protect sensitive information. Based on patterns observed in the industry, here are my predictions for data engineering in the next two to three years.

• Data Fabric And Data Mesh Expansion: The concept of a data fabric, which integrates disparate data sources into a unified layer, will continue to gain traction. Combined with data mesh architecture, organizations will see greater flexibility and scalability in their data operations, enabling more efficient collaboration across departments. • Serverless Data Platforms: Serverless computing will take on an even greater role in data engineering.

Companies will increasingly shift to serverless data architectures, reducing the overhead of managing infrastructure while focusing more on the logic of data processing. • Data Privacy By Design: As privacy concerns grow, companies will build privacy-enhancing technologies into their data pipelines from the outset, ensuring compliance with global regulations without sacrificing performance. In 2025, data engineering is not just about building infrastructure—it’s about creating agile, scalable and secure systems that can process vast amounts of data in real time.

The future of data engineering looks bright as organizations continue to innovate, leveraging modern technologies to unlock new insights, improve decision-making and drive business growth. Companies that invest in the latest data engineering solutions should be well-positioned to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly data-driven world. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.

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