AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate validates skills and knowledge in core data-related AWS services, ability to ingest and transform data, orchestrate data pipelines while applying programming concepts, design data models, manage data life cycles, and ensure data quality.
This is an in-demand role with a low supply of skilled professionals. AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate and accompanying prep resources offer you a means to build your confidence and credibility in data engineer, data architect, and other data-related roles.
The exam also validates a candidate’s ability to complete the following tasks:
- Ingest and transform data, and orchestrate data pipelines while applying programming concepts.
- Choose an optimal data store, design data models, catalog data schemas, and manage data lifecycles.
- Operationalize, maintain, and monitor data pipelines. Analyze data and ensure data quality.
- Implement appropriate authentication, authorization, data encryption, privacy, and governance. Enable logging.
Prerequisites
The recommended experience prior to taking this exam is the equivalent of 2-3 years in data engineering or data architecture and a minimum of 1-2 years of hands-on experience with AWS services.
The target candidate should have the following general IT knowledge:
- Setup and maintenance of extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines from ingestion to destination
- Application of high-level but language-agnostic programming concepts as required by the pipeline
- How to use Git commands for source control
- How to use data lakes to store data
- General concepts for networking, storage, and compute
The target candidate should have the following AWS knowledge:
- How to use AWS services to accomplish the tasks listed in the Introduction section of this exam guide
- An understanding of the AWS services for encryption, governance, protection, and logging of all data that is part of data pipelines
- The ability to compare AWS services to understand the cost, performance, and functional differences between services
- How to structure SQL queries and how to run SQL queries on AWS services
- An understanding of how to analyze data, verify data quality, and ensure data consistency by using AWS services
Exams
The exam has the following content domains and weightings:
- Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation (34% of scored content)
- Domain 2: Data Store Management (26% of scored content)
- Domain 3: Data Operations and Support (22% of scored content)
- Domain 4: Data Security and Governance (18% of scored content)
Recertification
This certification is valid for 3 years. Before your certification expires, you can recertify by passing the latest version of this exam.