AWS Data Engineer Associate notes
I passed the AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate Exam on November 22nd, 2024, and during my study journey I created the following notes.
I hope they are useful to you 😊
Contents
Analytics
- Amazon Athena
- Amazon EMR
- AWS Glue
- AWS Lake Formation
- Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
- Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink
- Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)
- Amazon OpenSearch Service
- Amazon QuickSight
Application Integration
- Amazon AppFlow
- Amazon EventBridge
- Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (Amazon MWAA)
- Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
- Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
- AWS Step Functions
Cloud Financial Management
Compute
Containers
- Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR)
- Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
Database
- Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)
- Amazon DynamoDB
- Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)
- Amazon MemoryDB for Redis
- Amazon Neptune
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon Redshift
Developer Tools
- AWS CLI
- AWS Cloud9
- AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)
- AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodeCommit
- AWS CodeDeploy
- AWS CodePipeline
Frontend Web and Mobile
Machine Learning
Management and Governance
- AWS CloudFormation
- AWS CloudTrail
- Amazon CloudWatch
- AWS Config
- Amazon Managed Grafana
- AWS Systems Manager
- AWS Well-Architected Tool
Migration and Transfer
- AWS Application Discovery Service
- AWS Application Migration Service
- AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
- AWS DataSync
- AWS Snow Family
- AWS Transfer Family
Networking and Content Delivery
Security, Identity, and Compliance
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
- Amazon Macie
- AWS Secrets Manager
- AWS Shield
- AWS WAF
Storage
- AWS Backup
- Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
- Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
- Amazon S3
Additional information
💡 FAQs
Is it difficult?
The difficulty level is moderate but can feel challenging if you're not familiar with services like Redshift, Glue, S3, and Athena. The exam requires a deep understanding of these services and their integration in designing optimal ETL workflows and database solutions on AWS.
Who is this exam for?
This exam isn't just for Data Engineers. I recommend it to MLOps, Database Engineers, Cloud Engineers, DevOps professionals, and anyone working with data on AWS.
Should this be your first AWS certification?
It's possible to take this as your first AWS certification, especially if you're a Data Engineer. However, I recommend starting with the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate to build a foundational understanding of AWS services.
How long does preparation take?
It depends on your level of expertise. For me, it took about 40 hours to review the exam content and complete practice tests. If you're already working as a Data Engineer with AWS, I'd recommend focusing on reviewing key concepts and spending most of your time on practice exams.