100 Executive Women in Tech
to Watch in 2025
Neha Narkhede
Co-Founder, Board Member at Confluent
Neha Narkhede is a Co-Founder and former CTO at Confluent, a streaming data technology company. She is one of the initial engineers who created Apache Kafka and is a committer and PMC member on the project. Previously, she led the Kafka and Samza teams and was responsible for LinkedIn’s petabyte-scale streams infrastructure.
Neha started her career at Oracle as a Principal Software Engineer. Then she went on to work as the Lead of Streams Infrastructure at LinkedIn. While working at LinkedIn, together with her two colleagues, she created the Platform Apache Kafka. They came up with the idea while on a project at the company and developed Kafka as an open-source Platform.
In 2018 Neha was listed as one of America's and the world's top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes. And in 2020, she was included in the Forbes list of America’s Self-Made Women. She now serves as a board member of Confluent.
Neha started her career at Oracle as a Principal Software Engineer. Then she went on to work as the Lead of Streams Infrastructure at LinkedIn. While working at LinkedIn, together with her two colleagues, she created the Platform Apache Kafka. They came up with the idea while on a project at the company and developed Kafka as an open-source Platform.
In 2018 Neha was listed as one of America's and the world's top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes. And in 2020, she was included in the Forbes list of America’s Self-Made Women. She now serves as a board member of Confluent.
