Winners represent diverse industries, highlighting the critical role of orchestration in enabling everything from advanced analytics to production AI
New York, New York – January 29, 2026 – Astronomer, the company behind Astro, the leading unified orchestration platform powered by Apache Airflow®, today announced the winners of its second annual customer awards program, the Astronomer Data Excellence Awards.
As AI reshapes enterprise technology, data engineers are evolving from pipeline builders into architects of intelligent systems. The modern data engineer’s role now extends beyond traditional DataOps to encompass context engineering to orchestrate decision-making workflows across data, ML, and AI platforms. Unlike legacy systems that capture information after decisions are made, today’s data engineers build orchestration layers that preserve the full context of why decisions happen in real-time, creating a context graph that will become enterprises’ most valuable AI-era asset. Data engineers are no longer just moving data between systems, but are becoming custodians of organizational intelligence. This means managing everything from pipeline orchestration and model observability to LLM orchestration and cross-system context assembly, positioning data engineers at the strategic center of AI-driven business operations.
The Astronomer Data Excellence Awards recognize the innovative projects and talented individuals who are redefining what’s possible with orchestration using Airflow. These annual awards shine a spotlight on organizations that are not only building exceptional data products, but also demonstrating the transformative power of enterprise-grade data pipeline orchestration. From enabling production AI to powering real-time analytics at scale, the award winners represent the cutting-edge of data engineering prowess.
“Our 2026 Astronomer Data Excellence Award winners exemplify what is possible when you put orchestration at the heart of your data strategy,” says Pete DeJoy, CEO and Co-Founder, Astronomer. “These success stories underscore just how essential Airflow and robust orchestration have become — including production AI, continuous compliance and other demanding use cases. Congratulations to each of our award winners on this recognition!”
Astronomer Data Excellence Award Winners
- Innovator of the Year - Lyft
- EMEA Innovator of the Year - NewDay
- Outstanding Customer-Facing AI Use Case - Notion
- Excellence in AI-Enabled Data Engineering - AO World
- Operational Excellence Award - Moloco
- Data Observability Excellence Award - Booking.com
- Data-at-Scale Achievement - Wix
- Data Engineering for Good Award - Carnegie Mellon University
Further Resources:
- Read the Astronomer Data Excellence Awards blog post
- Explore Astronomer customer stories
- Interested in joining Astronomer? We’re hiring
- Get started today for free with Astro IDE to ship data pipelines 10x faster
About Astronomer
Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading orchestration platform powered by Apache Airflow®. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value and power data-driven applications. Trusted by more than 900 of the world’s leading enterprises, Astronomer lets businesses do more with their data. To learn more, visit www.astronomer.io.
Apache® and Apache Airflow® are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. No endorsement by the Apache Software Foundation is implied by the use of these marks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Media Contact: Taylor Jones press@astronomer.io
