Service dbt + Airflow orchestration · dbt consultant + developer · UK

dbt + Airflow orchestration for the data team drowning in 470. dbt models nobody owns.

dbt + Airflow orchestration for UK data teams who inherited the sprawl and now own the pages. We rescue 470 models nobody can trace, then ship ownership, freshness SLAs, lineage, a semantic layer, and per-workload cost attribution — orchestration that scales past 1,000 models without a 2am page.

Send a 5-line brief Back to AI services
24hreply, from a senior
100+projects shipped since 2019
Senioronly, on the spine
(Why data leads sign)

You need dbt + Airflow orchestration that someone owns. We ship it with senior engineers and the receipts your acquirer reads.

A pile of dbt models is not a data platform. We rebuild yours into a system with owners, freshness SLAs, lineage, and a cost line your CFO trusts.

Send a 5-line brief

0

dbt rescues shipped since 2022/01

0

Production incidents on shipped engagements/02

5day

Fixed-scope audit. 30-page brief. Six ADRs. Fixed quote./03
The data lead this page is for470 models · no owner · “rip or replace”

A scale-up had 470 dbt models. Two engineers, part-time. Nobody owned the pipeline.

01

A UK SaaS scale-up signed us for dbt + Airflow orchestration after six months of in-house attempt. Two engineers part-time, no observability, no audit log, and a Confluence page for the runbook. The acquirer’s CTO walked the codebase pre-LOI and said it plainly: rip and replace, or take a 25% diligence haircut.

02

We rebuilt over ten to fourteen weeks. Senior engineers paired daily. ADRs documented the same day. The evidence pipeline was wired on Day 1. The acquirer’s CTO came back to the diligence call, walked the same surface, and signed retention. Full team kept. Deal closed at ask.

03

This page is for the founder or data lead who decided the pipeline is shipping to production, and wants it to land without taking the business down.

Ownership before models, always
The orchestration pains we hear in every audit

The pain. The Day-1 architecture answer.

Each pain decides whether your pipeline survives the next silent failure, the next cost spike, or the next 10× in models. Here’s how we answer the three we hear most.

Send a 5-line brief
The model nobody owns

Project structure and model ownership

Staging, intermediate, and mart layers. An owner and a freshness SLA on every model. Dead models pruned. Lineage UI so the next engineer reads the graph, not the tribal knowledge.

The cost spiral

Per-workload cost attribution

Every model and every Airflow task tagged with warehouse spend. Budget alerts before the invoice. The bill stabilises within 30 days.

The silent failure

Per-workflow observability and alerts

Freshness checks, run-state alerts to PagerDuty and Slack, and a lineage view so on-call knows what broke and what it feeds. The customer never finds out first.

Data orchestration services tech stack · dbt + Airflow + warehouse + AWS

The stack we ship every dbt + Airflow engagement on.

dbt for the transformation layer, Airflow or Dagster for orchestration, the warehouse you already run, and the observability that keeps it honest at scale.

T1

What we build every pipeline on

dbt + Airflow
dbt CoreApache AirflowPythonSQLSnowflakeBigQueryPostgreSQLGreat Expectationsdbt semantic layerGitHub ActionsSentryDatadog
T2

When your brief calls for it

reach when needed
DagsterDatabricksApache SparkKafka / ConfluentFivetran / AirbyteDuckDB
T3

The cloud and infra for scale

AWS-default
AWSAWS MWAAAWS S3AWS RDS / AuroraKubernetes (EKS)DockerRedisTerraformAWS Cost ExplorerAWS Secrets ManagerCloudWatchOpenTelemetry
WHAT THE REBUILD SHIPS

Six things that turn a pile of models into a platform

The dbt + Airflow orchestration we ship on every engagement.
Owned, observable, and defendable on a diligence call.

OWN

Project structure and ownership

Staging, intermediate, and mart layers. An owner and a freshness SLA on every model. Dead models pruned, lineage UI so the next engineer reads the graph.

OBS

Observability and alerts

Freshness checks, run-state alerts to PagerDuty and Slack, and a lineage view so on-call knows what broke and what it feeds. The customer never finds out first.

COST

Per-workload cost attribution

Every model and every Airflow task tagged with warehouse spend. Budget alerts before the invoice. The bill stabilises within 30 days.

AUDIT

Audit log per run

Every dbt run, every model change, every backfill logged and queryable. The SOC 2 auditor reads it and moves on.

SEM

One semantic layer

Metrics defined once and consumed everywhere. The dashboard, the API, and the board deck pull the same number. Drift stops at the source.

DR

Restore rehearsed and scale-ready

A DR drill on the calendar, RTO and RPO tested, backfills idempotent. Selective runs and smart scheduling so the DAG scales past 1,000 models.

Results

The scale-up’s pipeline,
after the rebuild, in numbers

We rebuilt 470 unowned dbt models as a layered project: every model with an owner and a freshness SLA, Airflow orchestration with per-task cost tags, a semantic layer, lineage UI, and DR rehearsed.

Ownership

4700
Models with no owner
100%
Models with freshness SLA

Diligence

12 wk
In-house to acquirer-defendable
0
Diligence haircut, closed at ask

Track record

8
dbt rescues since 2022
0
Production incidents shipped
SERVICE

What in-house teams can’t hand you

A focused set of dbt + Airflow orchestration services that turn a pile of models into a data platform someone can defend.

SERVICE (01)

Project restructure and ownership

We rebuild 470 unowned models into staging, intermediate, and mart layers, with an owner and a freshness SLA on every surviving model and the dead ones pruned.

Layered structure Model ownership Freshness SLAs Lineage UI

Project restructure and ownership

SERVICE (02)

Airflow and Dagster orchestration

Orchestration that scales past 1,000 models, with selective runs, smart scheduling, and a DAG you can reason about. We ship on Airflow by default and Dagster where asset-based fits.

Apache Airflow Dagster Selective runs Scales past 1,000 models

Airflow and Dagster orchestration

SERVICE (03)

Observability and cost attribution

Freshness checks and run-state alerts to PagerDuty and Slack, plus every model and Airflow task tagged with warehouse spend and budget alerts before the invoice.

Freshness checks Run-state alerts Cost tags Budget alerts

Observability and cost attribution

SERVICE (04)

Semantic layer and lineage

Metrics defined once in the semantic layer and consumed everywhere, so the dashboard, the API, and the board deck pull the same number. Drift stops at the source.

Semantic layer One definition Lineage view No metric drift

Semantic layer and lineage

SERVICE (05)

Audit evidence and DR

An audit log per run, an ADR pack, and a SOC 2 evidence stance, with disaster recovery rehearsed quarterly so restore is proven inside four hours, not promised.

Audit log ADR pack SOC 2 evidence DR rehearsed

Audit evidence and DR

How a dbt + Airflow engagement starts

Audit first. Then sprint.

The honest decision. A fixed-price audit bounds the risk before any code ships, then a fixed-scope sprint, then an optional retainer if your team wants the pairing to continue.

01Phase 1 · £8,000 fixed

5-day audit

Two senior engineers read your estate and your brief, then hand you a plan you can act on with or without us.

  • 30-page written brief
  • Six ADRs and a risk matrix
  • Lineage and ownership gaps mapped
  • Fixed-price quote for the sprint
02Phase 2 · from £25K fixed

Orchestration sprint

Eight to fourteen weeks of fixed-scope shipping. Audit-led, evidence-first, observable, multi-cloud comfortable.

  • Project restructure and ownership
  • Airflow / Dagster orchestration
  • Freshness SLAs and cost attribution
  • Semantic layer and lineage UI
03Optional · from £5K / month

Post-build retainer

One day a week of a senior engineer for three to six months, so your team gets unblocked and stays that way.

  • Performance and cost work
  • New model surfaces
  • On-call pairing for your team
  • 30-day walk-away, both ways
dbt + Airflow orchestration · honest answers

What data leads actually ask before signing

Pain-first, soft-second.

The audit is £8K fixed. The sprint is typically £25-65K fixed-price, scoped at the audit so you see the number before you commit. No day-rate, no scope creep. If the audit shows the work is smaller than that, we tell you in the brief, not in week ten.

No. We work in-place where we can. Whatever you run today, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Databricks, we orchestrate on top of it. Migration is scoped at the audit only if you want it, and the old and new pipelines run in parallel until you sign off.

With the graph. Week one we build the lineage, find which models feed revenue and which are dead, and hand you an ownership map. The data orchestration services work then restructures into staging, intermediate, and mart layers with an owner and a freshness SLA on every surviving model.

You decide, we recommend. We lead with Airflow because it has the largest hiring pool and your next engineer already knows it. Where your team wants asset-based orchestration and software-defined assets, Dagster is the better fit, and we ship on both. The audit makes the call explicit with the trade-offs written down.

An ADR pack, an audit log per run, ownership and freshness on every model, and a SOC 2 evidence stance. We’ve had an acquirer CTO walk the surface and sign full-team retention. The dbt + Airflow orchestration we ship is built to survive that call, not just pass it.

30-day walk-away both ways. The £8K audit is fixed and bounded, so you’re never more than five days at risk before you decide. UK VAT registered, listed on Companies House, shipping since 2019. IP assigns on every commit.

Every engagement has two senior engineers paired, not one. Every decision goes into an ADR the same day. Mohit reviews every PR. In seven years, two engineers have left mid-project. Both handovers were inside 48 hours.

Yes, with 14 days’ notice. Engineers move to other projects, spend pauses, and you resume with 14 days’ notice. No cancellation fee. We’ve done it six times in 2025.

Dbt airflow orchestration — workflow / interface
In context

What it looks like shipped.

dbt airflow orchestration, in context — the dashboards, flows and components your team actually ships, reviews and maintains.

A dbt + Airflow plan you can take to your board

Five lines. That’s it.

Tell us your current estate, your deadline, and the outcome you need. Mohit replies inside 24 hours: a clear yes, a clear no, or the one question that decides it, plus the next audit slot.

Write to mohit@empyrealinfotech.com Replies in 24hSenior-only, no juniorsAudit £8K fixed
What happens after the email lands
  1. < 24h

    A personal reply.

    Yes, no, or the deciding question. Straight to your inbox.

  2. Week 1

    The 5-day audit.

    Lineage mapped, ownership gaps found, 30-page brief and a fixed quote.

  3. Wk 14

    A pipeline someone owns.

    Orchestration, freshness SLAs, cost attribution, the brief your acquirer reads.