Apache Kafka + Bruin

Source

Ingest Apache Kafka data into your warehouse with incremental loading, quality checks, and full lineage. Defined in YAML, version-controlled in Git.

For business teams

What you get

Files and events in your warehouse
Apache Kafka data lands in your warehouse with automatic schema detection. No manual parsing, no format guessing.
Schema drift protection
Quality checks catch unexpected format changes, null values, and schema drift from Apache Kafka before it breaks models.
Data lake orchestration
Use Apache Kafka as a staging layer. Bruin handles landing, transforming, and materializing, all in one pipeline.
Multi-cloud flexibility
Move data between Apache Kafka and other storage or warehouses. Bruin manages scheduling, retries, and lineage.

For data & engineering teams

How it works

Automatic schema detection
Bruin detects Apache Kafka data schemas automatically. No manual configuration when formats change.
YAML-defined, Git-versioned
Your Apache Kafka pipeline is a YAML file. Review in PRs, deploy with CI/CD, roll back with git revert.
Format validation
Quality checks catch schema drift, unexpected nulls, and format changes from Apache Kafka at the ingestion layer.
Land, transform, materialize
Use Apache Kafka as staging. Bruin handles the full flow: land raw data, transform, and materialize into your warehouse.

Before you start

Kafka cluster access

Consumer group permissions

Step 1

Add your Apache Kafka connection

Connect using Kafka broker configuration with authentication. Add this to your Bruin environment file, credentials are stored securely and referenced by name in your pipeline YAML.

Parameters

bootstrap_serversKafka server or servers to connect to (host:port format)
group_idConsumer group ID for identifying the client
security_protocolProtocol for broker communication (e.g., SASL_SSL)
sasl_mechanismsSASL mechanism for authentication (e.g., PLAIN)
sasl_usernameUsername for SASL authentication
sasl_passwordPassword for SASL authentication
batch_sizeNumber of messages to fetch per batch (default: 3000)
batch_timeoutMaximum wait time for messages in seconds (default: 3)

connections:
  kafka:
    type: kafka
    uri: "kafka://?bootstrap_servers=localhost:9092&group_id=test_group&security_protocol=SASL_SSL&sasl_mechanisms=PLAIN&sasl_username=example_username&sasl_password=example_secret&batch_size=1000&batch_timeout=3"

Step 2

Create your pipeline

Define a YAML asset that tells Bruin what to pull from Apache Kafka and where to land it. This file lives in your Git repo, reviewable, version-controlled, and deployable with CI/CD.

name: raw.kafka_data
type: ingestr

parameters:
  source_connection: kafka
  source_table: 'data'
  destination: bigquery

Step 3

Add quality checks

Add column-level and custom SQL checks to your Apache Kafka data. If a check fails, the pipeline stops, bad data never reaches downstream models or dashboards.

Catch events with future timestamps

Validate file paths and timestamps are present

Flag schema drift at the ingestion layer

columns:
  - name: file_path
    checks:
      - name: not_null
  - name: event_timestamp
    checks:
      - name: not_null

custom_checks:
  - name: no events from the future
    query: |
      SELECT COUNT(*) = 0
      FROM raw.kafka_data
      WHERE event_timestamp > CURRENT_TIMESTAMP()

Step 4

Run it

One command. Bruin connects to Apache Kafka, pulls data incrementally, runs your quality checks, and lands clean data in your warehouse. If a check fails, the pipeline stops, bad data never reaches downstream.

Backfill historical data with --start-date

Schedule with cron or trigger from CI/CD

Full lineage from Apache Kafka to your dashboards

$ bruin run .

Running pipeline...

  kafka_data
    ✓ Fetched 2,847 new records
    ✓ Quality: campaign_id not_null     PASSED
    ✓ Quality: spend not_null           PASSED
    ✓ Quality: no negative ad spend     PASSED
    ✓ Loaded into bigquery

  Completed in 12s

Other Storage & Streaming integrations

Amazon Kinesis

Amazon S3

CSV Files

Dropbox

Google Cloud Storage

Google Drive

Ready to connect Apache Kafka?

Start for free, or book a demo to see how Bruin handles ingestion, quality, lineage, and scheduling for your entire data stack.

Book a demo Read the docs