AWS Certified Developer - Associate
Validates technical expertise in developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications using AWS services. Covers core AWS services, development best practices, CI/CD pipelines, security, and troubleshooting. Recommended for those with one or more years of hands-on experience developing and maintaining AWS-based applications.
Exam domains
- Development with AWS Services32%
Develop code for applications hosted on AWS (programming languages - Python, JavaScript/Node.js, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby; AWS SDKs - boto3, AWS SDK for JavaScript v3, AWS SDK for Java v2; AWS CLI for scripting; idempotency patterns; retry strategies with exponential backoff and jitter; pagination handling; AWS request signing - SigV4). Develop code for AWS Lambda (Lambda function handlers, event sources - API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB Streams, Kinesis, EventBridge, SQS; Lambda destinations - SNS/SQS/Lambda for async invocations; Lambda Layers for shared dependencies; Lambda environment variables, secrets via Secrets Manager; Lambda concurrency - reserved vs provisioned, cold starts; Lambda extensions for observability; container image vs zip packaging; Lambda VPC access; AWS SAM and AWS CDK). Use data stores in application development (DynamoDB single-table design, partition key + sort key, GSI/LSI, query vs scan, consistent reads, DynamoDB Streams, transactions, conditional writes, TTL; S3 SDK operations - put/get/copy, multipart upload, presigned URLs, S3 Object Lambda; RDS via SDK and RDS Proxy; Aurora Serverless Data API; ElastiCache Redis/Memcached client patterns; OpenSearch Service for search). Use Amazon API Gateway (REST APIs vs HTTP APIs vs WebSocket APIs; integrations - Lambda proxy, Lambda non-proxy, HTTP, AWS service; authorization - IAM, Lambda authorizers, Cognito user pool authorizers, JWT validation; throttling, caching, usage plans, API keys; stage variables; X-Ray integration; private APIs with VPC endpoints). Use eventing and messaging (EventBridge - default vs custom event buses, schema registry, archive and replay, cross-account event routing, partner event sources; SNS topics - standard vs FIFO, message filtering, message attributes, delivery policies; SQS - standard vs FIFO queues, dead-letter queues, visibility timeout, long polling, message deduplication for FIFO; Step Functions - Standard vs Express workflows, Map state for parallel processing, error handling, integration with AWS services via service integrations).
- Security26%
Sources
Questions are grounded in 100 references from official and authoritative materials.