Certifications for DevOps
DevOps as a discipline has no single governing body and no one exam that certifies "DevOps" the way the CKA certifies Kubernetes administration. What exists instead is a handful of certifications that each certify one real slice of the practice — a cloud vendor's opinion of delivery and operations, a foundation's proof you can run a live cluster under a clock, a tool vendor's proof you can read and write its configuration language. This page covers three that are currently relevant to a working DevOps engineer. They are not a checklist to collect in order; they measure different things for different goals — breadth of AWS delivery services versus hands-on cluster operation versus one specific IaC tool — and the honest first move is picking the one that matches the gap you actually have, not the one with the most letters after your name.
Think of three different driving tests. One asks you a hundred questions about road signs across a whole city's worth of roads — that's a knowledge test, and it's the AWS exam. One sits you in an actual car, on an actual track, with a broken engine, and says "fix it and drive it, we're timing you, no multiple choice at all" — that's the CKA. One tests you on exactly one specific tool, like a forklift instead of a whole vehicle — that's Terraform Associate. Passing all three doesn't make you a better driver than passing the one your job actually needs.
The landscape
☺ Like you're 10: One test is wide and shallow (know a lot about AWS), one is narrow and deep (prove you can operate a cluster with your hands), and one is narrow and shallow (know one tool's syntax well). None of them replaces the other two.
The three certifications on this page sit on genuinely different axes. The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional is breadth over depth and knowledge-based: multiple-choice and multiple-response questions across a wide span of AWS delivery, monitoring, and incident-response services, sat at a screen with no terminal in front of you. The Certified Kubernetes Administrator is the opposite: depth over breadth, and 100% performance-based — you are dropped into a live command-line environment with real, sometimes broken clusters and asked to fix them, with no multiple-choice question anywhere on the exam. The Terraform Certified: Associate is narrower still — one tool, one configuration language — and knowledge-based like the AWS exam, which makes it the cheapest and fastest of the three to prepare for.
If you're looking for a natural first step, the Terraform Associate is usually it: it's knowledge-based, has no formal prerequisites, sits in an hour, and gives you a concrete, gradeable target while you're still building the muscle memory that a performance-based exam like the CKA actually requires. The AWS exam is the one to save for last if your platform runs on AWS specifically — its own recommendation is 2+ years of hands-on AWS experience behind you, and its scope assumes you've already lived through real deployments and real incidents, not just read about them.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02)
☺ Like you're 10: A big multiple-choice test about how to ship, watch, and fix software running on Amazon's cloud — no terminal, just picking the right answer from a list, over and over, about a lot of different AWS tools.
DOP-C02 is AWS's own professional-level certification for the delivery and operations side of running production workloads on AWS. It's run by Amazon Web Services itself, sat online proctored or at a physical testing center, and made up of multiple-choice and multiple-response questions — pick one correct answer, or pick several, from a list of options. There's no hands-on lab component to this exam; it tests whether you know which AWS service and which configuration is the right answer to a given operational scenario.
It's aimed at engineers who are already operating AWS workloads in production — release engineers, SREs, and DevOps engineers who provision infrastructure, automate deployments, and are the ones paged when a CloudWatch alarm fires. AWS doesn't formally require anything before you sit it, but it recommends candidates have two or more years of hands-on experience operating AWS workloads first; the exam's scenario questions assume you've actually used the services being asked about, not just read their documentation pages.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | Multiple-choice and multiple-response, online proctored or testing center |
| Question count | 75 |
| Duration | Not verified from AWS's own exam guide in this pass — check the current guide before you plan around a number |
| Passing score | Not verified from AWS's own exam guide in this pass — check the current guide before you plan around a number |
| Prerequisites | None formally required; AWS recommends 2+ years of hands-on AWS experience |
This exam maps most directly onto three lessons in this course. CI/CD pipelines covers the pipeline-as-code and fast-feedback concepts the exam expects you to apply against services like CodePipeline and CodeBuild; deployment strategies covers rolling, blue-green, and canary releases, which the exam tests against AWS-specific implementations (CodeDeploy deployment configs, weighted Route 53 routing); and measuring success covers the observability and incident-response thinking the exam's monitoring and remediation domains draw on.
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
☺ Like you're 10: No multiple choice at all — they hand you a real, sometimes-broken cluster over a terminal and say "fix it," and time you doing it.
The CKA is run by The Linux Foundation on behalf of the CNCF and is 100% performance-based: there is no multiple-choice section anywhere on this exam. You're given a live command-line environment with a series of real Kubernetes clusters — some intentionally broken or unconfigured — and a list of hands-on tasks to complete directly against them. It's aimed at anyone who operates Kubernetes clusters day to day: cluster administrators, SREs, and DevOps engineers responsible for the platform other teams' workloads run on, rather than the application developers deploying onto it.
Because the exam only grades whether the cluster ends up in the correct state, not how you got there or how elegant your commands were, preparation for the CKA looks completely different from preparation for a knowledge-based exam — repetition at a real keyboard against a throwaway cluster, not flashcards.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | 100% performance-based — live command-line environment, real clusters, no multiple choice |
| Task count | Approximately 15–20 hands-on tasks, each worth a different point weight shown during the exam — not equally weighted; verify the current weighting at the vendor's own page |
| Duration | 2 hours (120 minutes) |
| Passing score | 66% |
| Open-book | Yes — the official Kubernetes documentation at kubernetes.io/docs is allowed during the exam |
| Prerequisites | None formally required |
| Validity | 2 years |
Since the per-task point weights aren't republished here as domain percentages, the closest thing to a syllabus is the set of skills the exam draws on, which line up with three lessons here. Containers & orchestration covers the Kubernetes objects — Pods, Deployments, Services — the exam expects you to create and troubleshoot from a bare kubectl prompt. Infrastructure as code covers the declarative, desired-state thinking that underlies how Kubernetes itself reconciles cluster state, which is the mental model the exam is really testing. Incident management covers the diagnose-under-pressure mindset the exam's broken-cluster tasks are built to reward.
↗ Linux Foundation official page
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004)
☺ Like you're 10: A one-hour, online, multiple-choice test about reading and writing Terraform's configuration language correctly — no live infrastructure involved.
The Terraform Associate is run by HashiCorp and tests knowledge of Terraform specifically: HCL syntax, the core workflow (init, plan, apply), state, providers, and modules. It's sat online proctored and made up of multiple choice, true/false, and multiple-answer questions — no hands-on terminal component. It's aimed at anyone who writes or reviews Terraform configuration day to day: the exam certifies foundational knowledge of the tool, not architecture-level infrastructure design. The current version is 004, which replaced the retired 003 version; if you find older study material referencing 003, treat it as out of date.
Because HashiCorp doesn't always publish an exact question count on its own exam page, the figure below is third-party reported rather than an official number — verify the current count at HashiCorp's own page before you plan your pacing around it.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | Online proctored — multiple choice, true/false, and multiple-answer questions |
| Question count | Approximately 57–60 (third-party reported; HashiCorp does not always publish an exact count — verify at the official page) |
| Duration | 60 minutes |
| Passing score | Not officially published by HashiCorp; informally reported around 70% — verify at the vendor's own page before you plan around a number |
| Prerequisites | None formally required |
| Validity | 2 years |
| Version note | 004 is current as of 2026; it replaced the retired 003 version |
This one maps cleanly onto two lessons here. Infrastructure as code is the direct match — declarative vs. imperative, idempotency, and state and locking are exactly what the exam tests, using Terraform's own .tfstate and locking model as the running example. Configuration management is the second, more indirect match — it draws the boundary between what Terraform provisions and what a tool like Ansible configures afterward, which is a distinction the exam expects you to already hold clearly.
Which one should you take?
☺ Like you're 10: Pick based on what you're missing, not based on which badge sounds the most impressive.
There's no universally "right" order — the right next step depends on what gap you're actually trying to close.
| If you are… | Take this next | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New to certification exams, or want a fast concrete win | Terraform Associate | No prerequisites, an hour long, narrow scope — the fastest of the three to study for and pass |
| Operating Kubernetes clusters in production, or want to prove hands-on skill rather than recall | CKA | The only one of the three that's performance-based; it certifies you can actually do the work, not just recognize the right answer |
| Already deep in AWS, with a couple years of production experience under your belt | AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional | Its scope assumes real AWS operational experience — it's the wrong first exam if you don't have that yet |
| Building a general DevOps/platform résumé with no single cloud or tool focus | Terraform Associate, then CKA | Together they cover the two most tool-agnostic, most commonly required skills — IaC and Kubernetes — before you specialize into one cloud vendor's exam |
Exam codes, prices, question counts, and formats change without much notice — AWS has revised DOP-C02 before and will again, HashiCorp retired Terraform 003 in favor of 004, and The Linux Foundation periodically updates the CKA's curriculum weighting. Every fact on this page was checked against the vendor's own materials as of August 2026, and a few (the AWS exam's duration and passing score, the Terraform exam's exact question count and passing score, the CKA's per-task point weighting) are flagged above as unverified or third-party for exactly that reason. Verify current details — especially price, duration, and passing score — at the vendor's own exam page before you register for anything.
Foxy: Okay, I want a certification. Which one do I actually need?
Ellie the Elephant: That depends on what you're missing, not what sounds best on a résumé. What do you actually do all day?
Foxy: I write Terraform configs at work but I've never had anyone check whether I'm doing it right.
Ellie the Elephant: Then Terraform Associate first. It's an hour, no prerequisites, and it's a direct check on the exact thing you're unsure about.
Timmy the Turtle: And don't stop there and call yourself done — a knowledge-based exam proves you can recognize the right answer. It doesn't prove your fingers can type it correctly under a clock. That's what the CKA is for.
Foxy: And the AWS one?
Ellie the Elephant: Save it. It assumes years of AWS scars you haven't earned yet — go collect a few real production deploys first, then it'll actually be easier, not just longer.
1. Which of the three certifications on this page has no multiple-choice component at all, and what does it use instead? 2. What passing score does the CKA require, and is the official Kubernetes documentation allowed during the exam? 3. Which version of the Terraform Associate exam is current as of 2026, and what version did it replace? 4. Which of the three certifications has a formally recommended (though not required) amount of prior hands-on experience, and how much?
Check your answers
- The Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) — it's 100% performance-based, using a live command-line environment with real clusters and hands-on tasks instead of multiple-choice questions.
- 66%. Yes — the official Kubernetes documentation at kubernetes.io/docs is allowed during the exam, since it's open-book.
- Version 004 is current as of 2026; it replaced the retired 003 version.
- The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional. AWS doesn't formally require it, but recommends 2+ years of hands-on AWS experience before sitting the exam.