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AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01): Exam Guide and Study Plan
AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01) exam guide: format, syllabus and domain weights, AWS services to study, a 6-week plan and practice questions.
On this page
The AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (exam code DEA-C01) checks that you can build and run data pipelines on AWS: ingest and transform data, choose the right data stores, keep pipelines running, and secure the data. Interest in it is growing fast in India.
This guide explains the exam in plain words, which AWS services matter most, which free lessons on this site help, and a realistic plan to pass.
The exam at a glance
These facts come from the official AWS exam page and exam guide, checked on 31 October 2026.
| Questions | 65: 50 scored and 15 unscored (you cannot tell which) |
| Question types | Multiple choice (1 correct) and multiple response (2 or more correct) |
| Time | 130 minutes |
| Price | $150 (local taxes and exchange rates may apply) |
| Passing score | 720 on a scale of 100–1,000 |
| Where | Pearson VUE test centre or online proctored |
| Languages | English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese |
| Valid for | 3 years |
| Recommended experience | 2–3 years in data engineering, 1–2 years hands-on with AWS |
Unanswered questions count as wrong and there is no penalty for guessing, so answer everything. Scoring is compensatory: you need to pass the exam overall, not each domain.
What the exam covers
| Domain | Weight | In plain words |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Data Ingestion and Transformation | 34% | Getting data in (batch and streaming), transforming it, and orchestrating pipelines. |
| 2. Data Store Management | 26% | Choosing the right store, designing data models and schemas, cataloguing, and managing the data lifecycle. |
| 3. Data Operations and Support | 22% | Running, automating and monitoring pipelines, analysing data, and checking data quality. |
| 4. Data Security and Governance | 18% | Authentication, authorisation, encryption, privacy, governance and logging. |
The exam does not test ML training, language-specific code syntax, or drawing business conclusions from data.
The AWS services that matter most
The exam is mostly about choosing the right service for a situation. Know what each of these is for, and when you would pick it over the others.
| Need | Main services | Study on this site |
|---|---|---|
| Store raw and processed data | Amazon S3 (storage classes, lifecycle rules) | S3 for data engineers |
| Catalogue and serverless ETL | AWS Glue (Data Catalog, crawlers, Spark jobs, job bookmarks) | Glue catalog, crawlers and ETL |
| Big Spark or Hadoop jobs | Amazon EMR | EMR |
| SQL on files in S3 | Amazon Athena | Athena |
| Data warehouse | Amazon Redshift (and Redshift Spectrum) | Redshift |
| Streaming | Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon Data Firehose, Amazon MSK | Kinesis |
| Orchestration | AWS Step Functions, Amazon MWAA (managed Airflow), Amazon EventBridge | Step Functions |
| Small event-driven steps | AWS Lambda | Lambda for data pipelines |
| Permissions and governance | IAM, AWS Lake Formation, AWS KMS | IAM, Lake Formation |
| Monitoring and logging | Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail | CloudWatch monitoring |
Start with AWS for data engineers and the AWS data services landscape, which show how these pieces fit together. The official exam guide also lists every in-scope and out-of-scope service.
A 6-week study plan
This plan assumes about 1 hour a day and some SQL and Python. Use the AWS Free Tier for hands-on practice, and set a billing alarm first so a forgotten cluster does not cost you money.
| Week | Focus | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | S3, IAM and the catalog | Create buckets with lifecycle rules; write an IAM policy; crawl a folder with Glue and query it in Athena. |
| 2 | Batch ingestion and transformation | Write a Glue job that turns CSV into partitioned Parquet; compare the Athena cost before and after. |
| 3 | Streaming | Send events to Kinesis Data Streams; deliver them to S3 with Data Firehose. |
| 4 | Data stores | Load data into Redshift; learn distribution and sort keys; query S3 data with Redshift Spectrum. |
| 5 | Operations and security | Orchestrate the flow with Step Functions; add CloudWatch alarms; secure tables with Lake Formation and KMS. |
| 6 | Review | Take the official practice question set and practice exam; revise the domains you scored lowest in. |
Practice questions
These are our own questions, written to show the style and the reasoning. They are not taken from the real exam.
Question 1
Analysts want to run occasional SQL queries on CSV and Parquet files in S3, with no servers to manage and paying only for what they scan. Which service fits best?
Show answer
Answer: B. Athena is serverless SQL directly on files in S3, billed by the data scanned. A Redshift cluster or EMR cluster would need to be sized and running.
Question 2
Athena queries on a large CSV dataset are slow and expensive. Which two changes help the most? (Choose two.)
Show answer
Answer: A and B. Parquet lets Athena read only the columns it needs, and partitions let it skip folders that do not match the filter. Both cut the data scanned, which cuts both time and cost.
Question 3
Clickstream events must land in S3 every few minutes as compressed files, with the least management. Which service fits best?
Show answer
Answer: A. Firehose is fully managed: it buffers records, can compress and convert them, and delivers them to S3 without any servers to run.
Question 4
Different teams may only see certain columns of the same data lake tables. What is the most manageable way to enforce this?
Show answer
Answer: B. Lake Formation grants fine-grained permissions (tables, columns, rows) on catalogued data in one place, without copying data.
Exam-day tips
- Find the key requirement. Words like “least operational overhead”, “most cost-effective” or “near real time” decide between two answers that both work.
- Prefer serverless and managed when the question asks for the least effort: Glue, Athena, Firehose, Step Functions.
- Watch for “choose two”. Multiple-response questions say how many answers to pick; all must be correct.
- Pace yourself. 65 questions in 130 minutes is 2 minutes each. Flag hard ones and come back.
A word on “dumps”
Websites that sell “real exam questions” break the AWS certification agreement, and AWS can revoke certificates for it. The questions are also often wrong. Learn the services hands-on and use the official AWS practice material instead.
Is it worth it?
It is most useful if you work, or want to work, on AWS data platforms, because it shows you can choose between services sensibly. AWS also gives you 50% off your next AWS exam once you pass. Pair it with one end-to-end project, for example S3 → PySpark → Snowflake, so you can talk about real decisions in interviews.