HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Authoring and Operations Professional
Validates professional-level skills in authoring dynamic Terraform HCL configuration and establishing scalable, collaborative workflows. Covers resource lifecycle management, developing and troubleshooting dynamic configuration with functions and meta-arguments, collaborative workflows with remote state and automation, creating and maintaining reusable modules, configuring and troubleshooting providers, and HCP Terraform governance including policy as code. Lab-based exam requiring hands-on Terraform operations with the AWS provider. Prerequisite: Terraform Associate certification recommended.
Exam domains
- Manage Resource Lifecycle17%
Drive the init/plan/apply/destroy workflow and tune resource lifecycle meta-arguments (create_before_destroy, prevent_destroy, ignore_changes, replace_triggered_by) to control mutation order. Reconcile drift and adopt unmanaged infrastructure using terraform import, import blocks, moved blocks, and targeted state operations (terraform state mv/rm/list/show).
- Collaborate Using HCP Terraform17%
Operate HCP Terraform workspaces and projects with remote runs, VCS-driven workflows, CLI-driven workflows, and API-driven workflows, managing variables, variable sets, and provider credentials centrally. Govern runs with teams/RBAC, policy as code (Sentinel and OPA), run tasks, and private module/provider registries.
- Configure and Use Terraform Providers17%
Configure Terraform's plugin-based providers including required_providers, version constraints, multiple provider aliases for multi-region/multi-account deployments, and authentication via env vars or assumed roles. Diagnose provider errors using TF_LOG/TRACE output, schema mismatches, and provider-specific debugging guides.
- Develop Collaborative Terraform Workflows17%
Sources
Questions are grounded in 50 references from official and authoritative materials.