kubectl exec fails with the error "Unable to use a TTY - input is not a terminal or the right kind of file"

When the flags -it are used with kubectl exec, it enables the TTY interactive mode. Given the error that you mentioned, it seems that Jenkins doesn't allocate a TTY.

Since you are running the command in a Jenkins job, I would assume that your command is not necessarily interactive. A possible solution for the problem would be to simply remove the -t flag and try to execute the following instead:

kubectl exec -i kafkacat-5f8fcfcc57-2txhc -- kafkacat -b cord-kafka -C -t BBSim-OLT-0-Events -o s@1585031458

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