Beyond Automation: The 2025 Role of Agentic AI in Autonomous Data Engineering and Adaptive Enterprise Systems

Abstract

Agentic AI concerns the use of decision-making capabilities to perform tasks in an autonomous way, with a focus on AI applied to autonomous systems. This paper explores agentic AI’s role beyond traditional automation, particularly in autonomous data engineering and adaptive enterprise systems. By 2025, agentic AI will be increasingly embedded in enterprise data pipelines—allowing systems to self-configure and automate business processes related to data engineering tasks. Such implementations leverage AI to provide holistic system autonomy, moving beyond what AI-centric solutions dedicated to individual subtasks can achieve. Data engineering and adaptive enterprise systems offer an instructive arena for observing the transition from automation to agentic AI: it is most apparent when intelligent agents experienced in data engineering are added to oneself-solving, self-configuring, and adaptive enterprise systems. Although these developments come with inherent ethical considerations, the transition from automation to agentic AI is best described as evolution rather than revolution.