Additional resources
Good places to study alongside our practice questions. These are other people's sites: we don't run them and aren't affiliated with them.
Official exam information
Straight from AWS: what the exam covers and how it works.
AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (opens in a new tab)
aws.amazon.com
AWS's own page for the certification: who it is for, how to book, the price and format, and links to its preparation material.
DEA-C01 exam guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
The definitive list of what the exam covers: the four domains and their weightings, the skills under each, and which AWS services are in scope. Our domains and topics follow it.
Free courses
Structured courses you can follow from the start, at no cost.
AWS Skill Builder (opens in a new tab)
skillbuilder.aws
AWS's own training site. Search for the Data Engineer – Associate exam prep plan; the standard prep course is free with a Skill Builder account, while labs and the official practice exam may need a subscription.
Reference reading
For going deeper on the ideas behind the questions.
AWS Glue Developer Guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
Glue runs through most of this exam: ETL jobs, crawlers, the Data Catalog, workflows and Data Quality. Knowing its options well pays off across every domain.
Amazon Redshift Database Developer Guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
Table design, COPY and UNLOAD, Spectrum, materialized views and data sharing. Redshift questions appear in nearly every set.
AWS Lake Formation Developer Guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
Fine-grained, tag-based and cross-account permissions on a data lake, which the security and governance domain leans on heavily.