6. First-ever Certification Program for Apache Kafka

First-ever Certification Program for Apache Kafka


  • As Apache Kafka® becomes the heart of the streaming data infrastructure at more and more organizations, we’ve been hearing from companies that they want some way of ensuring that the folks they hire are familiar with the platform, and are able to hit the ground running – as operators/administrators, or as developers. (Or both, of course.)

    Those requests led us to develop our new Certification program, which we launched today. You can now prove your Kafka knowledge by becoming a Confluent Certified Developer for Apache Kafka (CCDK) or Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka (CCAK). This will demonstrate that you have real Kafka knowledge: not just a basic grasp of the concepts, but a real, in-depth understanding of how things work, how to write resilient, reliable Kafka clients (CCDK), or how to manage a cluster, and diagnose and fix problems when they occur (CCAK).

    You will be able to take the exams at home or at your office, via an online proctored process – no need to travel to a test center and deal with a less-than-great environment. That also means the exams are available wherever you are in the world, something which is not always the case for certification programs that require in-person attendance. We are using a state-of-the-art proctoring company, for both your protection and ours; we want to ensure the integrity of the Certification process, and you as a candidate want to be sure that your credential is meaningful, and legitimate.

    The exams will be in-depth and detailed, but we’re not out to trick you. We expect that developers know the Java API, and that administrators are familiar with the major configuration parameters, but we won’t ask you the default value of that weird, obscure parameter that only five people have ever used in the history of the Kafka project. Our exams aim to test real-world knowledge and expertise, not whether or not you have a photographic memory.

    Our Certification exams are tied to a major release of Confluent Platform (such as version 3.x), and will be valid for two years from the date you take them. At that time, you’ll need to either recertify (if that major version is still active) or certify on the new active version. Why expire certifications? Because we know that an out-of-date Certification does no-one any good – Kafka is moving (and adding features) fast enough that the chances are it will have changed significantly two years from now. We know that not everyone upgrades Kafka immediately a new version is released, which is why we won’t expire or invalidate a Certification just because a new version of Confluent Platform is released. But employers, and companies hiring contractors, want to be sure that they people they’re hiring understand the platform as it exists now, not as it existed at some point in the dim and distant past.

    We’re announcing the Certification program now, and we will begin delivering the exams in April. In the meantime, watch https://www.confluent.io/training/ as we will be adding more information over the next few weeks, including study guides and sample questions. That’s also where you will find links to register for the exams as soon as they’re made live.

    The post First-ever Certification Program for Apache Kafka appeared first on Confluent.



    https://www.confluent.io/blog/first-ever-certification-program-for-apache-kafka/
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