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Apache Kafka

100 interview questions with practical answers covering fundamentals, production operations and architecture.

10 topics100 questions & lessons

Kafka Fundamentals

10 questions · Open → 02

Consumers & Replication

10 questions · Open → 03

Delivery & Producers

10 questions · Open → 04

Ordering & Offsets

10 questions · Open → 05

Consumer Operations

10 questions · Open → 06

Connect, Retry & Streams

10 questions · Open → 07

Streams & Transactions

10 questions · Open → 08

KRaft & Scaling

10 questions · Open → 09

Architecture Patterns

10 questions · Open → 10

Production Scenarios

10 questions · Open →

Topics

Optional study guide

See the big picture · Apache Kafka

Trace an event from writer to reader

Start with the diagram, compare the concepts, then apply them to the lesson.

ProducerPublishes an event.
Topic partitionStores the event in an ordered log.
ConsumerReads records from assigned partitions.
ApplicationProcesses the event for its use case.

At a glance
Term	Responsibility	Remember
Topic	Names an event stream	A topic can contain several partitions
Partition	Maintains an ordered log	Ordering is within a partition
Broker	Hosts partition data	A cluster contains brokers
Consumer group	Coordinates readers	Traditional groups assign a partition to at most one member at a time

Watch for this: An offset identifies a position within a partition. It is not a unique position across the whole topic.

Read the Apache Kafka introduction