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

• Apache Governance Guidelines
• Tim’s GitHub GIFs
• Apply to be an infrastructure engineer 
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Get 30% off Kafka Summit London registration with the code KSL20Audio