The Confluent Operator is a Kubernetes Operator that enables users to deploy and manage Apache Kafka on Kubernetes, overcoming the challenges of stateful applications such as maintaining stable identities for nodes, retaining node states across failures, and restoring application lifecycles. It leverages Custom Resource Definitions and Operators to provide deployment and management automation for Kafka and the Confluent Platform on Kubernetes, addressing nuances specific to Kafka, such as configuration management, rolling cluster restarts, and data balancing. The Operator will support popular Kubernetes distributions and will be released in conjunction with a reference architecture, deployment templates, and Confluent Platform docker images, aiming to make streaming data ubiquitous by combining the flexibility of Kubernetes with the scalability of Apache Kafka.