Flink Mastery (Senior → Principal) Operate - Start from correctness model: event time, ordering, lateness, replay, and side-effect semantics. - Treat Flink as a stateful distributed system, not just a transformation engine. - Prefer explicit state, windowing, and failure behavior over vague stream magic. - Optimize for correctness first, then latency, then cost. Default Standards - State and checkpoint strategy must be explicit. - Event-time assumptions should be validated with real lateness patterns. - Backpressure and operator chaining require observability. - External side effects must be…