3. Confluent Data Streaming Engineer Foundations
The Confluent Certified Data Streaming Engineer Foundations certification validates your knowledge of Apache Kafka fundamentals and data streaming concepts. This certification demonstrates your ability to work with event-driven architectures and real-time data pipelines.
Exam Domains
The exam covers the following domains:
Apache Kafka Fundamentals
Topics and Partitions: creation, configuration, replication, log compaction
Producers and Consumers: acknowledgment modes, consumer groups, offset management
Brokers and Clusters: configuration, ZooKeeper/KRaft, fault tolerance
Kafka Connect
Source and Sink connectors
Connector configuration
Single Message Transforms (SMTs)
Connector monitoring and management
Schema Registry
Schema evolution strategies
Avro, JSON Schema, and Protobuf
Compatibility modes (backward, forward, full)
Subject naming strategies
Kafka Streams
Stream processing fundamentals
Stateless and stateful operations
Windowing and time semantics
Interactive queries
ksqlDB
Stream and table abstractions
Push and pull queries
Persistent queries
ksqlDB applications
Recommended Learning Path
Foundation
Complete Kafka 101 course
Understand topics, partitions, producers, and consumers
Set up a local Kafka cluster for hands-on practice
Data Integration
Learn Kafka Connect fundamentals
Practice with common connectors (JDBC, S3, Elasticsearch)
Understand connector configurations and transforms
Schema Management
Study Schema Registry concepts
Practice schema evolution scenarios
Understand compatibility modes
Stream Processing
Learn Kafka Streams basics
Practice with ksqlDB
Understand windowing and time semantics
Practice and Review
Work through hands-on tutorials
Review documentation for edge cases
Take practice assessments