Exam Overview
Exam Details
- Code: DEA-C01
- Level: Associate
- Duration: 130 minutes
- Questions: 65
- Passing Score: 720/1000
- Cost: ~$150 USD
- Validity: 3 years
👤 Who It's For
Data engineers and related roles. AWS recommends 2–3 years of data engineering experience and 1–2 years of hands-on experience with AWS services. Strong fit for anyone who previously targeted the retired DAS-C01, plus ETL/pipeline developers and analytics engineers.
📊 Exam Domains
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| 1. Data Ingestion and Transformation | 34% |
| 2. Data Store Management | 26% |
| 3. Data Operations and Support | 22% |
| 4. Data Security and Governance | 18% |
Domain weights reflect the DEA-C01 exam guide. Confirm against the latest official guide.
📚 Key Topics
Ingestion & Transformation
- Batch vs. streaming ingestion patterns
- Kinesis Data Streams / Data Firehose, MSK (Kafka)
- AWS Glue ETL, Glue crawlers, Glue Data Catalog
- Spark on EMR; AWS DMS for migration/CDC
- Orchestration: Step Functions, MWAA (Airflow), EventBridge
Data Store Management
- S3 data lake design, partitioning, file formats (Parquet/ORC)
- Redshift architecture, distribution/sort keys, Spectrum
- Lake Formation permissions and governed tables
- Apache Iceberg / data lakehouse patterns
- Choosing the right store (DynamoDB, RDS, OpenSearch)
Operations & Support
- Monitoring pipelines with CloudWatch, Glue job metrics
- Cost & performance optimization (compression, partition pruning)
- Troubleshooting failed jobs, retries, DLQs
- Automation and CI/CD for data pipelines
Security & Governance
- Encryption at rest/in transit; KMS
- IAM, Lake Formation fine-grained access, row/column security
- Data quality, cataloging, lineage
- PII detection and masking (Macie, Glue)
☁️ Key AWS Services to Know
| Category | Services |
|---|---|
| Ingestion | Kinesis Data Streams, Data Firehose, MSK, DMS, DataSync |
| Transformation | AWS Glue (ETL, crawlers, Data Catalog), EMR (Spark), Lambda |
| Storage | S3, Redshift, Lake Formation, DynamoDB, RDS/Aurora |
| Query & Analytics | Athena, Redshift Spectrum, OpenSearch Service, QuickSight |
| Orchestration | Step Functions, MWAA (Airflow), EventBridge |
| Security & Governance | IAM, KMS, Lake Formation, Macie, Glue Data Quality |
📋 Study Checklist
Progress0%
- Read the official DEA-C01 exam guide
- Master S3 data lake design: partitioning, Parquet/ORC
- Build a Glue ETL job with a crawler and Data Catalog
- Understand Kinesis Data Streams vs Data Firehose vs MSK
- Learn Redshift distribution/sort keys and Spectrum
- Orchestrate a pipeline with Step Functions or MWAA (Airflow)
- Configure Lake Formation fine-grained permissions
- Query S3 with Athena; understand Iceberg/lakehouse
- Practice monitoring and cost/performance optimization
- Score 75%+ on practice exams before booking