As an engineering leader managing a team, Gwen Shapira talks through the steps she took to get to Confluent and how she got started working with Apache Kafka®. She shares about what it's like being on the Project Management Committee (PMC) for the Apache Software Foundation as well as some of the responsibilities involved, such as choosing Kafka Improvement Proposals (KIPs), monitoring releases, and making contributions to the community.

For Gwen, part of finding Kafka was her willingness to take risks, learn all types of code bases, and leave companies for a new technology that showed promise and sparked her interest. Given that not only Kafka itself but also how people learn Kafka has changed, Gwen shares her best tips for approaching the project.

There are differences between distributed systems engineers and full stack engineers, and for anyone who wants to work at a company like Confluent, it’s important to showcase design and architecture knowledge, a knack for solving problems, and confidence in your ideas.

EPISODE LINKS

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites
Artwork by Phil Vo

🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts.
▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating.
🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Distributed Systems Engineering with Apache Kafka ft. Gwen Shapira