Worked on the m1a2st/kafka repository to address a critical reliability issue in the Kafka producer’s buffer management. Focused on backend development using Java and Kafka, the work involved fixing a bug where pooled ByteBuffers could be prematurely reused while still in flight, leading to message corruption and misrouting. The solution deferred buffer deallocation until network requests completed, ensuring message integrity and memory safety during network events. Enhanced automated tests and performed manual validation to confirm the fix’s effectiveness. Demonstrated strong understanding of memory management, concurrency, and Kafka client architecture while improving the resilience of the producer’s data handling path.