When a test calls DebeziumContainer#getConnectorTaskState, it is possible that the returned tasks array is empty as the Kafka Connect container may not have yet started the tasks. When this happens, a NullPointerException is raised.

I propose a small check in the method such as:

final JsonNode tasksNode = parsedObject.get("tasks").get(taskNumber);
if (tasksNode == null) {
  return null;
}
return Connector.State.valueOf(tasksNode.get("state").asText());

This way if the specific task has not yet started, we avoid the NPE by returning null and allowing the caller's Awaility method to re-check periodically without failure.