The text explores the evolving role of data engineers and how Apache Airflow® and Astronomer facilitate their work in data orchestration. Data engineers design and build data pipelines, ensuring data is available and usable for various professionals, while managing infrastructure and adhering to organizational best practices. As data engineering has advanced, tasks have shifted from being handled by general developers to specialized roles, such as DevOps and infrastructure engineers, allowing data engineers to focus on creating Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) for efficient data movement. Apache Airflow®, a popular data orchestration tool, supports this by offering features for alerting, data quality checks, and integration with various data and machine learning platforms, although it presents challenges like infrastructure management and pipeline ownership. Astronomer enhances Airflow's capabilities by providing a managed service that simplifies setup, offers expert support, and reduces the dependency on DevOps, making it easier for data teams to build and manage data pipelines.