You probably already know that there are some upcoming changes to the AWS Certification Exams.

Let’s take a closer look at the professional exam that is getting it’s first ever content update – the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam.

The new exam will be code named DOP-C02. Most parameters of the exam remain unchanged – the exam fees, the duration, the number of questions, the delivery method all remain the same.

Exam Domains

The number of domains tested on the exam still remains at six (6) with some subtle changes to how the topics are organized and their relative weights.

Comparing the new exam outline with the old exam outline, here is the side-by-side look –

Comparison of DevOps Exam Domains : Old vs New

The changes are highlighted in yellow while green indicates elements that remained unchanged.

The key highlights are:

  • New / Renamed Domains –

    • Erstwhile Domain 4 “Policies and Standards Automation” is now replaced by Domain 6 “Security and Compliance” 6 with a weightage increased substantially to 17%
    • Erstwhile Domain 6 “High Availability, Fault Tolerance, and Disaster Recovery” now appears as Domain 3 “Resilient Cloud Solutions” with weightage slightly bumped down to 15%
    • Other four domains remain

  • Domain Weights Adjusted –

    • In addition to the above adjustments, two other domains – Domain 2 “Configuration Management and IaC” and Domain 5 “Incident and Event Response” have both been adjusted down in weightage slightly to 17% and 14% of the new exam respectively.

  • Domain Order Re-Shuffled –

    • The order of exam domains seems to have been shuffled a bit - “Monitoring and Logging” for instance was Domain 3 earlier and is now Domain 4 with the same weightage as before. This should be of no consequence to the test taker.

  • Summary –

    • The main change seems to be an increased emphasis on Security and Compliance in the new exam as seen by the significantly increased weightage of Domain 6.

Effective Date

If you are preparing to take the exam, note that registrations for the new exam DOP-C02 open on 31-Jan-2023 and the exam itself can be scheduled from 07-Mar-2023 onward. The old exam DOP-C01 will be offered till 06-Mar-2023 – so you have ample time to finish your certification or re-certification if are already on your preparation journey.

The latest information about the exam can always be found on the official certification page here. Good luck!