Hard to believe it was last September when AWS first announced its brand new Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) certification. This announcement was newsworthy for several reasons:

• It was the first new AWS Associate-level certification in over a decade! (The Solutions Architect, Developer, and SysOps Administrator Associate exams were all introduced with the launch of the global AWS certification program in 2013.)

• This was the beginning of a change in the AWS certification landscape. Shortly after announcing the new AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate certification, AWS also announced that it would be eliminating three of its specialty exams: AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty, AWS Certified Database – Specialty, and AWS Certified SAP on AWS – Specialty. With fewer specialty certifications, AWS now appears to be prioritizing job role-based certifications at the Foundational, Associate, and Professional levels.

The AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate exam was available in beta from November 27, 2023, to January 12, 2024. Pass and fail results have now been released to everyone who took the beta exam during this time period. AWS is now ready to release the final version of this exam on March 12, 2024!

In this blog post, I answer some questions you may have about this brand new exam, including:

• Who should take the new DEA-C01 exam?
• When will the new DEA-C01 exam be available?
• What is the format of the new DEA-C01 exam?
• What information is covered in the new DEA-C01 exam?
• How can Cloud Academy help me prepare for the new DEA-C01 exam?

Who should take the new DEA-C01 exam?

According to the new DEA-C01 Exam GuideThe new AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) exam is designed for individuals with 2-3 years of data engineering experience and at least 1-2 years of hands-on experience with AWS services. The exam guide also states that candidates for this certification should understand “the impact of volume, variety, and velocity on data ingestion, transformation, modeling, security, management, confidentiality, schema design, and optimal data storage design,” and promises to validate a candidate’s ability to perform the following tasks:

• Ingest data, transform it, 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, data protection and governance.

To pass this exam, you must have experience and expertise as an on-premises or cloud IT data engineer working with extract, transform, load (ETL) pipelines, using data lakes for data storage, and knowing how to analyze data and ensure data quality and consistency.

However, there are no formal prerequisites for this or other AWS certification exams, so anyone can register for and take the exam.

When will the new DEA-C01 exam be available?

Registration for the DEA-C01 exam begins on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. The exam can be taken from the same day.

What is the format of the new DEA-C01 exam?

Like the other three AWS Associate-level certifications, the new AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) exam costs $150 and contains 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions. Most questions have 4 possible answer options from which you must choose one correct answer, while others have 5 or 6 answer options from which you must choose two or three correct answers. Of the 65 questions on the exam, only 50 count toward your score. The other 15 questions are used by AWS for scoring purposes and have no impact on your score. There is no way to tell which questions will or will not count, but there is also no penalty for guessing, so always answer all the questions, even if it’s just an educated guess!

The exam can be graded pass or fail and is scored on a scale of 100 to 1,000. As with the other associate-level exams, a minimum passing score of 720 is required.

What information is covered in the new DEA-C01 exam?

The new DEA-C01 Examination Guide refers to four domains, which are listed in the following table.

DEA-C01 Domains

Let’s briefly discuss, in a little more detail, what is covered in each of these four areas.

DEA-C01 Domain 1: Data acquisition and transformation (34%)

This area makes up over a third of the total exam content and focuses on ingesting, transforming, and processing data, as well as orchestrating ETL pipelines for your data. This includes knowing how to read data from AWS services that stream data, such as Kinesis, Redshift, and DynamoDB streams, and then how to transform it based on your requirements using services like Lambda, EventBridge, and AWS Glue workflows. You’ll also need to understand some basic programming concepts like infrastructure as code, SQL query optimization, and continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI/CD, when testing and deploying your data pipelines.

DEA-C01 Domain 2: Data Storage Management (26%)

In this area, you need to know how to store and catalog your data. This includes everything from modeling your data to defining schemas for your data, which can be structured, unstructured, or semi-structured. You should have a thorough understanding of all AWS storage platforms and how to determine the best data store for your needs based on availability and throughput requirements. You also need to manage the lifecycle of your data in a way that is cost-effective, secure, and resilient.

DEA-C01 Domain 3: Data operations and support (22%)

This area assesses your ability to use AWS services to analyze your data and ensure data quality while automating the processing of your data. This includes configuring appropriate monitoring and logging of your data pipelines, and using services like CloudTrail and CloudWatch to help troubleshoot any issues that may arise. You should also be familiar with AWS Glue DataBrew and understand how it can be used for everything from preparing the data to be transformed to defining data quality rules, validating, and cleaning data.

DEA-C01 Domain 4: Data Security and Governance (18%)

This final area is all about data protection, authorization, and compliance. You should understand the role of security within an AWS architecture and know how to implement security both in your VPC network infrastructure and your users with AWS Identity and Access Management. This includes understanding the principle of least privilege and knowing how to apply role-based, attribute-based, and policy-based security when necessary. You also need to understand encryption and know how to use the AWS Key Management Service to encrypt and decrypt your data.

How can Cloud Academy help me prepare for the new DEA-C01 exam?

As soon as the new AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate exam was announced last year, our team here at Cloud Academy began evaluating the content in our library to create a brand new Preparing for AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) certification Course covering all aspects of the new DEA-C01 Exam Guide.

We also took the beta version of this exam when it was available (it was very challenging for an associate-level exam!) and used our collective knowledge and experience to create new and updated lessons, practice exercises, and assessments that cover all of the topics highlighted in the new DEA-C01 exam. Our new course is currently available in preview, but will be fully updated and released by March 12, 2024!

For the latest information on this exam and to learn about updates to other AWS certification exams, visit the Coming soon to the AWS Certification siteFrom there you can Examination Guide for the new DEA-C01 test.

To prepare for all AWS certifications, I recommend you take our Complete library of AWS certification content.

Good luck with your learning and keep an eye on this space in the coming months for more updates on AWS certifications. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime and I’ll be happy to help!

Danny