Prerequisite:

Question: What does the AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate exam cover?

Answer: The exam focuses on the following:

• Implementing, monitoring, and troubleshooting data pipelines
• Optimizing data pipeline cost and performance
• Data ingestion, transformation, and orchestration
• Choosing data stores and designing data models
• Operationalizing, maintaining, and monitoring data pipelines
• Analyzing data and ensuring data quality
• Implementing data security, governance, encryption, and logging

Question: Who is this certification ideal for?

Answer: Data engineers with 2-3 years of experience. Candidates should also have:

• Understanding of data ingestion, transformation, security, and data store design concepts.
• At least 1-2 years of hands-on experience with AWS services.

Question: What general IT and AWS knowledge is recommended?

Answer:

• General IT: ETL pipelines, basic programming, Git, data lakes, networking, storage, compute.
• AWS: How to use AWS services for data pipelines, encryption, governance, logging, SQL, data analysis.

Question: Are there specific skills this exam doesn't test?

Answer: Yes. The exam does NOT cover:

• Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
• Language-specific programming syntax
• Drawing business conclusions from data

Question: What types of questions are on the exam?

Answer:

• Multiple Choice: One correct answer, three distractors.
• Multiple Response: Two or more correct answers out of five or more options.

Question: How is the exam scored?

Answer:

• Pass/fail only.
• Scored on a scale of 100-1000, with 720 being the passing score.
• Some questions are unscored and don't affect your outcome.

Question: What are the main topics covered on the exam, and how much does each count?

Answer: Here's the breakdown:

• Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation (34%) - The largest portion of the exam focuses on getting data into AWS systems and transforming it for use.
• Domain 2: Data Store Management (26%) - Covers choosing the right data storage solutions (databases, etc.) and designing how your data is structured.
• Domain 3: Data Operations and Support (22%) - Deals with making your data pipelines run smoothly, troubleshooting, analyzing data, and keeping them optimized.
• Domain 4: Data Security and Governance (18%) - Ensures your data is safe, follows regulations, and has proper access controls.

Question: What's the general format of the exam?

Answer:

• Category: Associate-level
• Duration: 130 minutes
• Questions: 65 (mixture of multiple choice and multiple response)
• Cost: $150 USD (check the "Exam Pricing" page for the most up-to-date and localized costs)
• Delivery: Either at a Pearson VUE testing center or as an online proctored exam
• Languages: English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese

Question: What are the BIG skills this exam tests?

Answer:

• Working with core AWS data services
• Getting data into and out of AWS (ingestion)
• Transforming data to make it usable
• Building and managing data pipelines (think automation)
• Basic programming knowledge
• Designing how your data is structured (data models)
• Managing data throughout its lifecycle (from creation to deletion)
• Making sure data is accurate and of good quality