Methods and apparatus for a pipelined architecture for storage lifecycles are disclosed. A method includes identifying, during a transition candidate discovery iteration, storage objects of a multi-tenant service for which respective lifecycle transitions are to be scheduled, including a particular storage object identified as being a candidate for a particular lifecycle transition. The method includes generating transition job objects, each job comprising respective indications of one or more of the storage objects identified during the discovery iteration. The method includes assigning, during a transition execution iteration, resources to initiate storage operations for the particular lifecycle transition, and initiating, using the assigned resources, storage operations for the particular lifecycle transition.