How the course is built

☺ Like you’re 10: First you learn why platforms exist and how to think about them. Then you learn the five real jobs a platform engineer does. Then you practice until it sticks.

The course has three parts. Platform Foundations gives you the mindset — what an internal developer platform is, why “treat the platform as a product” is the whole game, and the reference architecture the pros reuse. The Exam Blueprint then walks the five official CNPE domains one at a time, in depth, with real CNCF tools and real manifests. And Exam Prep cements it with a common-preparation kit (how to study, the Kubernetes baseline, exam day, flashcards, a self-check quiz and a readiness checklist), a CNPE drill kit, and a full CNPA sub-course — with the tool landscape, case studies and a searchable glossary alongside in Practice & Reference.

Meet the Platform Guild

☺ Like you’re 10: To make the big ideas stick, this course is taught by a team of animal friends. Each one is an expert at one platform job — so the moment the beaver shows up, you know it’s time to build and ship.

Every big idea has a recurring character who is that idea — 🦉 Professor Owl draws the platform blueprint, 🐼 Master Panda keeps cognitive load low, 🦊 Foxy asks the question you’re thinking, 🐿️ Nutty discovers what developers actually need, 🦫 Benny the Beaver builds the delivery machinery, 🐘 Ellie the Elephant never forgets a metric or an incident, 🦋 Mira the Butterfly turns ugly YAML into self-service, and 🐢 Timmy the Turtle installs the guardrails — all in service of 🦆 Dot the Duck, the developer who just wants to ship. Meanwhile 🤖 Recon the Robot tirelessly makes reality match the plan, and 👺 Gizmo the Gremlin tempts everyone into shortcuts. Watch for the “Your hosts for this topic” strip and the little 🎬 At the Platform Guild scenes in each lesson.

Meet the full cast and see how it works → The Platform Guild

The one mental model that makes it all click

☺ Like you’re 10: A platform isn’t a pile of tools you force on people. It’s a product — and your developers are the customers. If they don’t love using it, you built the wrong thing.

Before any tool or YAML file, internalize this: a platform is a product, and your developers are its customers. You don’t win by mandating Kubernetes knowledge for everyone; you win by paving golden paths — the supported, well-lit, secure-by-default way to do the common things (spin up a service, get a database, ship to prod). Golden paths are optional but so good that people choose them. Get that right and every domain below is just execution: GitOps is how the path stays paved, self-service APIs are how developers walk it alone, observability is how you know it’s working, and policy is the guardrail that keeps them safe.

The platform, end to end

☺ Like you’re 10: One picture, one wish. Dot asks for a service; it flows right through three floors of the platform, while two more floors watch and guard every step.

Every domain you’re about to study is one plane in this picture, and every request moves through it left to right. Dot declares intent in the Control plane, the Delivery plane builds and provisions it, and the Resource plane runs it — while Observability watches and Security gates every single step. This is the master diagram for the whole course; the Reference Architecture lesson is where it’s unpacked in full.

The exam, at a glance

☺ Like you’re 10: The CNPE is a “show me, don’t tell me” test — you don’t pick A/B/C, you actually fix real things on a real computer.

The Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineer (CNPE) is a hands-on, performance-based exam launched by the CNCF and Linux Foundation in late 2025. You solve real tasks in a live Linux environment — no multiple choice. Here’s the shape of it (always confirm on the exam guide and the official pages):

Full exam guide, registration & a study plan →

The five domains, by weight

☺ Like you’re 10: The test spends more time on some topics than others. The two biggest — GitOps and self-service — are each a quarter of the whole thing, so lean in there.

The CNPE blueprint splits the platform engineer’s job into five domains. The bars show how much of the exam each one is worth — a useful map for where to spend your study time:

What’s inside

☺ Like you’re 10: The lessons stack like levels in a video game — each one uses what you learned in the level before, so you keep getting stronger.

…plus a searchable glossary in the sidebar under Practice & Reference, and the shared drills — field notes, flashcards, a self-check quiz and a printable readiness checklist — under Exam Prep · Common preparation.

Go deeper — Platform Engineering in depth

☺ Like you’re 10: The exam is just the start. Platform engineering is a huge world — so there’s a whole extra shelf of deep-dive lessons on the big topics the exam only touches.

The five CNPE domains are the core, but the discipline is vast. This Platform Engineering in Depth track goes well beyond the blueprint — each page is a thorough deep-dive with many sections and subsections, real CNCF tools, diagrams, and code. Read them to become a platform engineer, not just a certified one.

Tools used in Platform Engineering

☺ Like you’re 10: A platform is built from about thirty tools. Each one now has its own full page — what it’s for, how it works, the exact YAML you write, and what usually goes wrong.

The lessons teach the jobs; this section covers the tools that do them. 31 dedicated pages, each with architecture, the resources you actually write, day-to-day commands, gotchas, and a comparison against its rivals. ★ marks the tools named on the official CNPE curriculum; ◆ marks the wider ecosystem you’ll still meet in real work. Start at the Tool Landscape for the map.

Certifications — the whole landscape

☺ Like you’re 10: There are lots of badges you can earn. This tells you which ones are worth it, in what order — and which to skip.

The CNPE is the headline, but it sits in a ladder. Which cert? maps the whole landscape and recommends a path for your starting point. Each certification below has its own page with the official domains and weights, what it actually tests, and how to prepare using this site — including an honest verdict on when to skip it.

25 pages in all: the map itself, the 13-exam CNCF ladder (one programme, one set of rules, from KCNA up through CKS and the project associates), and 11 more grouped by the provider that sells them — PlatformEngineering.org · HashiCorp · AWS · Microsoft · Google Cloud · Red Hat · Linux Foundation · GitHub · GitLab · PeopleCert & DASA. Provider, not subject, is what sets the price, the format, the validity period and the renewal mechanics, so that is how they are grouped — and the sidebar is grouped identically, so the map and the menu agree.

Straight to a page: CNCF ladder — KCNA · KCSA · CKA · CKAD · CKS · CGOA · CAPA · CBA · CCA · ICA · KCA · OTCA · PCA. By provider — PlatformEngineering.org · Terraform · Vault · AWS · AZ-400 · Google Cloud · Red Hat · LFCS · GitHub · GitLab · SRE practice.

Hands-On Labs — a 6-part capstone build + 7 guided-drill tracks

☺ Like you’re 10: Reading about it isn’t doing it. These are the “get your hands dirty” pages — including one where you break things on purpose so you learn to fix them fast.

The CNPE is performance-based, so labs are the highest-value prep on this site. Start with the Capstone Hub, which now walks you through one real mini platform grown across six deep, connected parts — foundation, delivery, platform APIs, self-service, observability, and security — instead of nine disconnected exercises (short on time? the hub still keeps its original 9-item fast path). Then drill whichever domain you’re weakest in with the seven guided-drill tracks. Every lab has objective “done when” criteria, and your progress saves in the browser.

Exam Prep — the arsenal

☺ Like you’re 10: Reading about the test isn’t the same as practising for it. This is the drill kit: real tasks, the commands, what to memorise, and how to fix things fast.

Exam Prep is split three ways, exactly as the sidebar is. Common preparation is the part that applies whichever CNCF exam you sit. CNPE · professional is the performance-based drill kit. CNPA · associate is the knowledge-based sub-course. Work the common pages first; they are the cheapest hours you will spend.

Common preparation — before either exam

How to study, what Kubernetes you need before you start, and what the proctored sitting is actually like — plus the three shared drills that keep the material warm.

CNPE · professional — the performance-based drill kit

The CNPE is performance-based — officially 15–20 hands-on tasks in 120 minutes, pass mark 64%. You don’t pass by reading; you pass by having done it before and by being fast. These pages are the drill kit, including the thing most candidates get wrong: the documentation allowlist is narrow (Kubernetes docs only — not Argo CD, Crossplane or Prometheus), so a lot has to come from memory.

The practice bank splits into five per-domain sets — GitOps & CD, Platform APIs, Observability, Architecture and Security — and the triage playbook splits into workloads & storage, networking, RBAC & admission, and delivery, observability & platform APIs.

Ready for a timed sitting? Six full CNPE mock papers — Set 1 · Set 2 · Set 3 · Set 4 · Set 5 · Set 6 — each 18 tasks in 120 minutes with a scoring sheet and a worked solution for every task. Sit Set 1 once you have worked the banks, and keep the later sets sealed so each one can still measure you.

CNPA · associate — the knowledge-based sub-course

The CNPA is multiple-choice and closed-book: no cluster, no terminal, and no documentation tab. It is the sensible first step before CNPE, and it has its own hub, plan, banks and papers here.

Straight to a page: practice banks — Core Fundamentals · Observability & Security · Delivery & APIs · IDP & Measuring. Mock papers — Set 1 · Set 2 · Set 3 · Set 4.

The closed-book reference kit

Four more pages built specifically for a knowledge-based, closed-book paper — no cluster, no terminal, and (unlike CNPE) no documentation tab at all.