I Built My Second ETL Pipeline. This Time, I Started Thinking Like a Data Engineer

An automated RSS ingestion pipeline was built to explore the engineering decisions that transform a Python script into a reliable data system. The project used Python, Docker, PostgreSQL, and the Kestra orchestrator to focus on architecture rather than complex business logic. A key architectural decision was to build the application in layers, first creating the Python ETL, then ensuring idempotent database writes, and finally packaging it into a self-contained Docker image. This approach of validating each layer independently before integrating them made debugging the final orchestrated workflow significantly easier. This incremental process provided confidence that the core application worked before adding the complexity of the orchestration tool.