Confluent Developer ft. Tim Berglund, Adi Polak & Viktor Gamov
Hi, we’re Tim Berglund, Adi Polak, and Viktor Gamov and we’re excited to bring you the Confluent Developer podcast (formerly “Streaming Audio.”) Our hand-crafted weekly episodes feature in-depth interviews with our community of software developers (actual human beings - not AI) talking about some of the most interesting challenges they’ve faced in their careers. We aim to explore the conditions that gave rise to each person’s technical hurdles, as well as how their experiences transformed their understanding and approach to building systems.
Whether you’re a seasoned open source data streaming engineer, or just someone who’s interested in learning more about Apache Kafka®, Apache Flink® and real-time data, we hope you’ll appreciate the stories, the discussion, and our effort to bring you a high-quality show worth your time.
Episodes
293 episodes
Building Banking Systems with Kafka Streams with Mateo Rojas | Ep. 28
Adi Polak talks to Mateo Rojas (LittleHorse) about his career working with Kafka Streams. Mateo’s first job: building a real-money policy management platform on early Kafka Streams. His challenge: working at LittleHorse with Kafka as a workflow...
The AI Impact on the Developer Future with Joseph Morais | Ep. 27
Tim Berglund talks to Joseph Marais (Confluent) about his career in data streaming. Joseph’s first job: SAN administrator. His challenge: AI radically changing how developers build software.The Pragmatic Engineer episode ft. Grady Booch:...
Tech vs. People: The Hardest Problem with Will LaForest | Ep. 26
Tim Berglund talks to Will LaForest (Confluent) about his career in software and data streaming. Will’s first job: a high school internship at DARPA. His challenge: turning advanced technology into something people actually care about.
How Maven Changed Java Forever with Baruch Sadogursky | Ep. 25
Viktor Gamov talks to Baruch Sudakurski (TuxCare) about his career in developer advocacy. Baruch's first job: fixing electric kettles. His challenge: figuring out how to map a non-relational database (MongoDB) into Spring Data’s SQL-oriented mo...
Inside OpenAI’s Streaming Backbone with Aravind Suresh | Ep. 24
Adi Polak talks to Aravind Suresh (OpenAI) about his career in distributed systems and real-time streaming. Arvind’s first job: coding at school. His challenge: turning OpenAI’s fragile Kafka setup into a reliable, multi-region streaming backbo...
The 1 Billion Row Challenge with Gunnar Morling | Ep. 23
Tim Berglund talks to Gunnar Morling (Confluent) about his career in open source Java and data streaming. Gunnar’s first job: a student PHP developer in AMD’s e-learning group. His challenge: working at Decodable on the 1 Billion Row Challenge....
From Git Blame to Principal Engineer with Sage Pierce | Ep. 22
Adi Polak talks to Sage Pierce (Indeed) about his career in software engineering and event-driven architectures. Sage’s first job: Java Swing development at a Department of Defense–affiliated research lab. His challenge: working at Indeed on ev...
From Coding Machines to Leading Humans ft. Leonid Igolnik | Ep. 21
Viktor Gamov talks to Leonid Igolnik (Former CTO at Clari) about his career in B2B SaaS engineering leadership. Leonid’s first job: teaching kids Pascal. His challenge: changing buyer behavior and scale complex systems.Books mentioned:<...
Killing Clusters & Orchestrating Chaos with Colt McNealy | Ep. 20
Tim Berglund talks to Colt McNealy (LittleHorse Enterprises) about his career in distributed systems. Colt’s first job: software engineer at a real estate company. His challenge: working in a complex microservices environment and turning that p...
Deleting Architecture for Better Systems ft. Daniel Doubrovkine | Ep. 19
Adi Polak talks to Daniel Doubrovkine (Shopify) about his career building data‑intensive systems. Daniel’s first job: delivering pharmacy medications by bike. His challenge: building Artsy’s Art Genome and auctions as simple as possible.
Fail Fast & Ship It with Jeremy Custenborder | Ep. 18
Viktor Gamov talks to Jeremy Custenborder (Confluent) about his career in large-scale systems. Jeremy’s first job: paper boy. His challenge: keeping MySpace running at a massive pre-cloud scale while building the tools that didn’t exist yet and...
From “This May Never Work” to WarpStream with Richie Artoul | Ep. 17
Tim Berglund talks to Richie Artoul (WarpStream/Confluent) about his career in data infrastructure. Richie’s first job: working at Howie’s Game Shack, a walk‑in LAN gaming cafe. His challenge: working at Datadog on a new log storage system.
Inside $3M GPU Racks: Powering Modern AI with Bryan Oliver | Ep. 16
Adi Polak talks to Bryan Oliver (Thoughtworks) about his career in platform engineering and large-scale AI infrastructure. Bryan’s first job: building pools and teaching swimming lessons. His challenge: running large-scale GPU data centers whil...
Hacking Kafka Streams with Sophie Blee‑Goldman | Ep. 15
Tim Berglund talks to Sophie Blee-Goldman (Responsive) about her career in container orchestration and Kafka Streams. Sophie’s first job: interning at Google. Her challenge: helping a hyper-growth customer whose Kafka Streams app was about t...
Turning Chaos into Push-Button Provisioning with Dhiraj Suri| Ep. 14
Viktor Gamov talks to Dhiraj Suri (Confluent) about his career in systems engineering and stream governance. Dhiraj’s first job: software developer at NetApp. His challenge: working at Splunk to stitch together disparate systems into an event-d...
The Late Night Hack That Changed Daniel Hinojosa's Career | Ep. 13
Tim Berglund talks to Daniel Hinojosa (an independent consultant) about his career in software development, data engineering, and event-driven architecture. Daniel’s first job: Sears credit card telemarketing. His challenge: working at a compan...
From Early Startups to Product Leadership with Mike Agnich | Ep. 12
Tim Berglund talks to Mike Agnich (Confluent) about his career in product leadership and startups. Mike’s first job: refereeing youth basketball. His challenge: leading product across connectors, governance, stream processing, and partnerships ...
Adventures in Data Infrastructure with Gwen Shapira | Ep. 11
Adi Polak talks to Gwen Shapira (Nile) about her career in databases and data infrastructure. Gwen’s first job: a side hustle fixing computers. Her challenge: figuring out why a production report at HP slowed down dramatically after daylight sa...
Decreasing Java Build Times with Pratik Patel | Ep. 10
Tim Berglund talks to Pratik Patel (Azul Systems) about his career in developer relations and Java. Pratik’s first job: computer lab assistant at UNC Chapel Hill. His challenge: working at a large enterprise with manual, slow build processes an...
Reimagining Stream Processing with Matthias J. Sax | Ep. 9
Viktor Gamov talks to Matthias J. Sax (Confluent) about his career in stream processing and, specifically, Kafka Streams. Matthias’ first job: an electrician-in-training on BMW’s assembly lines. His challenge: building Kafka Streams at Confluen...
How Time Kills All Deals in Pre-Sales with Rachel Pedreschi | Ep. 8
Listen: https://confluent.buzzsprout.com | In this episode, Tim Berglund talks to his guest, Rachel Pedreschi (DeltaStream), about her career in pre-sales engineering. Her first job: rectory office assistant at her local parish. Her challenge/t...
Scaling AI in Engineering with Peter Bell | Ep. 7
Listen: https://confluent.buzzsprout.com | Today, Adi Polak talks to her guest, Peter Bell (gather.dev), about his career in software engineering leadership, CTO community building, and AI-driven development. Peter’s first job: electronics lab ...
How Kafka Expert Robin Moffat Tackles Open Source Problems | Ep. 6
Today, Viktor Gamov talks to his colleague Robin Moffat (Confluent) about his career in data engineering. His first job: paperboy. His challenge: working at a retailer with Oracle materialized views as well as teaching others how to productivel...
Building Parquet into Apache Pinot ft. Neha Pawar | Ep. 5
Today, Tim Berglund talks to Neha Pawar (StarTree) about her career in real-time analytics and open source database engineering. Her first job: a year-long internship at NVIDIA. Her challenge: leading the technical effort to add native Parquet ...
The Fix That Secured 1000s of Credit Cards ft. Brian Sletten | Ep. 4
In this episode, Tim talks to Brian Sletten (Bosatsu Consulting) about his career in software development. His first job: working at a small communications company that built network matrix switch interfaces. His challenge/theme: overhauling cr...
