Data Systems Academy
Data Engineeringbeginner45 minutes12 min readJanuary 14, 2026

Ship Your First Reliable Pipeline

DA
Written byData Systems AcademyThe Data Systems Academy team. Practical systems, real constraints, and portfolio-grade work.
Tags
pipelinesmonitoring

Step 1: Define the contract

Write down the schema, expected freshness, and who owns the pipeline.

Step 2: Add validation

Create tests for schema drift, null rates, and volume spikes.

Step 3: Instrument monitoring

Ship a freshness and volume dashboard before the first production run.

Prerequisites

  • Basic SQL
  • Python fundamentals