Kafka-Kinesis-Connector Commit of offsets threw an unexpected exception for sequence number: null

Question

I have a java project which is using Kafka-Kinesis-Connector as a connector used with Kafka Connect to publish messages from Kafka to Amazon Kinesis Stream which in turn triggers Lambda. The service we had was using kafka kinesis client 1.7.3 lib and amazon kinesis producer v 0.14.7. In order to migrate to latest version of AWS SDK Java V1 , these two libs were updated to versions 1.14.8 and

[2022-10-16 21:59:15,481] ERROR WorkerSinkTask{id=fm-sync-loads-analytics-nprod-test-01-0} Task threw an uncaught and unrecoverable exception. Task is being killed and will not recover until manually restarted. Error: The child process has been shutdown and can no longer accept messages. (org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask)
com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.DaemonException: The child process has been shutdown and can no longer accept messages.
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.Daemon.add(Daemon.java:173)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.addUserRecord(KinesisProducer.java:625)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.addUserRecord(KinesisProducer.java:535)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.addUserRecord(KinesisProducer.java:411)
    at com.amazon.kinesis.kafka.AmazonKinesisSinkTask.addUserRecord(AmazonKinesisSinkTask.java:235)
    at com.amazon.kinesis.kafka.AmazonKinesisSinkTask.put(AmazonKinesisSinkTask.java:143)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.deliverMessages(WorkerSinkTask.java:545)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.poll(WorkerSinkTask.java:325)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.iteration(WorkerSinkTask.java:228)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.execute(WorkerSinkTask.java:200)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.doRun(WorkerTask.java:184)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.run(WorkerTask.java:234)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:514)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1167)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:641)
    at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:844)
[2022-10-16 21:59:15,483] WARN WorkerSinkTask{id=fm-sync-loads-analytics-nprod-test-01-0} Offset commit failed during close (org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask)
[2022-10-16 21:59:15,483] ERROR WorkerSinkTask{id=fm-sync-loads-analytics-nprod-test-01-0} Commit of offsets threw an unexpected exception for sequence number 1: null (org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask)
com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.DaemonException: The child process has been shutdown and can no longer accept messages.
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.Daemon.add(Daemon.java:173)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.flush(KinesisProducer.java:916)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.flush(KinesisProducer.java:936)
    at com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.KinesisProducer.flushSync(KinesisProducer.java:962)
    at com.amazon.kinesis.kafka.AmazonKinesisSinkTask.lambda$flush$0(AmazonKinesisSinkTask.java:108)
    at java.base/java.util.HashMap$Values.forEach(HashMap.java:981)
    at com.amazon.kinesis.kafka.AmazonKinesisSinkTask.flush(AmazonKinesisSinkTask.java:106)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.sink.SinkTask.preCommit(SinkTask.java:125)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.commitOffsets(WorkerSinkTask.java:382)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.closePartitions(WorkerSinkTask.java:597)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.execute(WorkerSinkTask.java:201)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.doRun(WorkerTask.java:184)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.run(WorkerTask.java:234)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:514)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1167)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:641)
    at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:844)
[2022-10-16 21:59:16,452] ERROR WorkerSinkTask{id=fm-sync-loads-analytics-nprod-test-01-0} Task threw an uncaught and unrecoverable exception (org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask)
org.apache.kafka.connect.errors.ConnectException: Exiting WorkerSinkTask due to unrecoverable exception.
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.deliverMessages(WorkerSinkTask.java:567)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.poll(WorkerSinkTask.java:325)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.iteration(WorkerSinkTask.java:228)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerSinkTask.execute(WorkerSinkTask.java:200)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.doRun(WorkerTask.java:184)
    at org.apache.kafka.connect.runtime.WorkerTask.run(WorkerTask.java:234)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:514)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1167)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:641)
    at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:844)
Caused by: com.amazonaws.services.kinesis.producer.DaemonException: The child process has been shutdown and can no longer accept messages.