Study guide · Exam overview
The format, passing score, and six content domains of the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam, plus the delivery and recovery choices worth practicing before you book DOP-C02.
Exam version notice: This overview follows the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02), reviewed in October 2026. DOP-C02 replaced DOP-C01 on March 7, 2023. AWS has not published a DOP-C03. Domain weights are 22%, 17%, 15%, 15%, 14%, and 17%. The Korean-language version of this exam retires after December 31, 2026. Pricing, languages, and delivery options can change. Confirm them on the AWS certification site before you register. Items tagged Extra are useful context the guide places out of scope. Day-to-day operations without pipeline design sit on the CloudOps overview.
DOP-C02 checks whether you can provision, operate, and manage distributed systems on AWS. The exam guide describes the target candidate as a DevOps engineer with at least two years of that experience, plus the software development lifecycle and programming or scripting. The work is to ship through a pipeline, define infrastructure as code, survive a failure, see the signal, respond to the event, and apply security controls across accounts.
A question usually gives a constraint: a canary that must roll back on a failed health check, a template that must land in many accounts, a 15-minute recovery point, a log that must become a metric, an event that must start a runbook, or a member account that must not create a public bucket. Two options often both exist as real services. The better answer is the one that meets the constraint with the control the stem named.
The target candidate is not expected to design advanced routing algorithms, give deep security recommendations to developers, design and tune database queries, or write full-stack application code. Application code questions belong on the Developer path. Architecture-wide design that is not delivery or operations belongs on the Solutions Architect Professional path.
Figures below come from the AWS certification page and the DOP-C02 exam guide, reviewed in October 2026.
| Specification | DOP-C02 |
|---|---|
| Level | Professional. There is no required prerequisite certification. |
| Number of questions | 75. Sixty-five affect your score. Ten are unscored and are not identified on the exam. |
| Question types | Multiple choice (one correct answer and three distractors) and multiple response (two or more correct answers out of five or more options). |
| Length of test | 180 minutes. AWS offers an additional 30 minutes for eligible non-native English speakers who request the ESL accommodation before they register. |
| Passing score | 750 on a scaled range of 100–1,000. Scoring is compensatory: you pass the exam as a whole, not each domain. |
| Recommended experience | 2 or more years provisioning, operating, and managing AWS environments, plus the software development lifecycle and programming or scripting. The guide also expects experience securing AWS infrastructure. |
| Exam price | Professional exams are listed at 300 USD. Taxes and local-currency prices can differ. Confirm the current fee before you book. |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE, at a test center or with online proctoring. Languages listed by AWS include English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. AWS says the Korean version retires after December 31, 2026. |
| Validity | Three years. Recertify by passing the latest version of this exam. Passing it can also recertify eligible Associate credentials. Confirm the policy with AWS. |
Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect. There is no penalty for guessing, so answer every question. A scaled score of 750 is not the same thing as 75 percent of the questions. The exam uses official short names, and the in-exam Help lists the matching full service names.
These percentages are the share of scored content in the DOP-C02 exam guide. The 200 practice questions on this site follow the same weights.
Build, test, store the artifact, and shift traffic without editing production by hand.
One template, many accounts, and a desired state that comes back if someone edits the console.
Remove the single point of failure, then match the recovery number.
Collect the signal, keep it, and turn a pattern into an alarm.
The event should notify, change the fleet, and leave a trail you can read later.
Least privilege at account scale, then an alert when the control drifts.
Learn the in-scope services from the DOP-C02 exam guide. The same map is in the core notes and flashcards.
| Delivery need | Prefer | Remember |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestrate source, build, and deploy | AWS CodePipeline | CodeBuild compiles and tests. CodeDeploy ships the revision. A bucket is not a pipeline. |
| A secret the build can read | Secrets Manager or Parameter Store | Do not commit the value. Secrets Manager rotates. Parameter Store holds a static secure string. |
| A private package | AWS CodeArtifact | Amazon ECR stores the container image. S3 stores a generic artifact. They are not the same repository. |
| A tested AMI | EC2 Image Builder | Read the password at runtime. Do not bake it into the image. |
| Keep the old copy until traffic moves | Blue/green or canary | An in-place update changes the live instances. Rollback is harder once they are overwritten. |
| The same stack in many accounts | CloudFormation StackSets | A change set previews one update. Service Catalog offers an approved product. It does not replace the template. |
| A new account with guardrails | Control Tower and Organizations | An SCP limits member accounts. It does not grant permission. |
| Put a file back after a console edit | Systems Manager State Manager | One Run Command does not notice a later deletion. AppConfig is application configuration, not the instance file. |
| A 15-minute RPO across Regions | A continuous copy, not a nightly snapshot | RPO is data loss. RTO is downtime. Multi-AZ does not cover a Regional outage. |
| A log line that should page you | A metric filter and a CloudWatch alarm | Logs Insights is a query. It does not page anyone until you publish a metric or start a workflow. |
| A service event that starts a runbook | AWS Health to EventBridge | SNS fans the notification out. Step Functions owns a sequence with a catch. |
| A ceiling on a member account | A service control policy | A permissions boundary limits one principal. An IAM allow still has to exist. |
| Extra Advanced routing design | Leave the algorithm to the architecture exam | Using a health check, a load balancer, or an existing route is in scope. Designing failover algorithms is not. |
| Extra Query tuning and full-stack code | Leave the study to the data and developer paths | The guide lists database design, query optimization, and full-stack development as out of scope. |
| Extra OpsWorks and CodeStar | Prefer Systems Manager and CodePipeline unless the stem names the older product | The exam guide still lists both. Confirm the current console name before you rely on either in a lab. |
Multiple choice has one correct response and three distractors. Multiple response has two or more correct responses out of five or more options. The stem tells you how many to choose. Select every response that completes the statement, and nothing extra.
Distractors are real services that solve a nearby problem. If the need is “run the unit tests,” CodeDeploy is the nearby wrong answer because it ships a revision that already built. If the need is “fail over inside the Region,” a cross-Region replica is the nearby wrong answer because it is the Regional plan, not the Multi-AZ standby. If the need is “stop a member account from leaving the organization,” an IAM policy in that account is the nearby wrong answer because the account can change its own policy.
Words such as MOST, BEST, and LEAST are the constraint. MOST cost-effective still has to meet the recovery number in the stem. LEAST operational overhead usually means a managed service. There is no published penalty for a wrong guess. A blank answer is incorrect.
A practical sequence once you can already name CodeBuild, CloudFormation, and an alarm.
Say whether you need source, test, artifact, or traffic shift. The service follows that sentence.
Change set or CDK diff, then StackSets when the same stack must land in many accounts. An SCP is the ceiling, not the grant.
Write the RPO and RTO before you pick backup and restore, pilot light, or warm standby. Keep Multi-AZ in the availability column.
Metric filter, alarm, EventBridge, then the runbook. A dashboard that nobody watches is not a response.
IAM allows. A permissions boundary and an SCP limit. A finding stays open until you remediate it.
Use the six flashcard decks, then the original questions at about two minutes each. Review every explanation and return to domains below 75 percent. Aim for a steady 85 percent before you book.
The overview, core notes, flashcards, and practice exams are all published.
Exam format, the 750 passing score, domain weights, and a study plan.
Reference notes for pipelines, infrastructure as code, recovery, monitoring, and security.
50 recall cards in six decks, plus memory notes for releases, accounts, recovery, and guardrails.
200 original questions with custom exams, explanations, and a score report by domain.
The current exam is DOP-C02, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional. It replaced DOP-C01 on March 7, 2023. As of October 2026, AWS has not announced a DOP-C03. Confirm the code on the AWS certification page before you book.
Results use a scaled score from 100 to 1,000. The minimum passing score is 750. You do not need a passing score in every domain. A scaled score is not the percentage of questions you answered correctly.
The exam has 75 questions and a 180-minute time limit. Sixty-five questions affect your score. Ten are unscored and are not labeled. Question types are multiple choice and multiple response.
There is no required prerequisite certification. AWS describes the candidate as someone with 2 or more years provisioning, operating, and managing AWS environments, plus experience with the software development lifecycle and programming or scripting.
DOP-C01 retired on March 6, 2023. DOP-C02 is the exam you take now. A credential you already earned stays valid until its own expiration date. Recertify by passing the latest version of this exam.
This certification is valid for three years. Recertify by passing the latest version of this exam. Passing it can also recertify eligible Associate credentials. Confirm the current policy with AWS before your expiration date.
No. The practice questions on this site are original. They are not AWS exam items, and a practice score does not predict a result.
Service names and prices change. Use the current AWS exam guide and the AWS certification site as the authority when they differ from these notes.
Useful companions while you study.
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Exam versions, objectives, prices, languages, and retirement dates can change. Verify the details on the AWS certification page before you register.
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