AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) Guide 2025

Introduction to AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02)

If you’re ready to prove you can automate, secure, and scale production systems on AWS, the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) is one of the most respected badges you can earn. This guide distills what the exam covers, how to prepare smartly, what it costs, and how to turn the certification into real career momentum. You’ll find practical steps, study plans, and insider tips—all in plain English.

As of today, DOP-C02 is the active version of the DevOps Engineer – Professional exam, with 75 questions in 180 minutes and delivery options both at test centers and online. The price is USD $300, and the exam is offered in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. AWS uses scaled scoring with a minimum passing score of 750 for Professional-level exams. Certifications are valid for three years.

Let’s break down everything you need to know—and the steps to get you exam-ready.

What This Certification Proves (and Why It Matters)

The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional validates your ability to design and run automated, secure, resilient, and observable workloads at scale on AWS. It’s the certification that speaks to people who build pipelines, ship code reliably, manage fleets, and keep production healthy—day in, day out. AWS describes the target candidate as someone with 2+ years of hands-on experience operating and managing AWS systems and with solid SDLC/programming or scripting skills.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• You can connect development and operations through AWS-native CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and observability.

• You design secure and compliant systems with automated guardrails and evidence collection.

• You build resilient architectures and respond to incidents effectively.

A helpful change in the current DOP-C02 version: the content is aligned closely with the AWS Well-Architected Framework, with security consolidated under its own domain. If you’ve been practicing Well-Architected reviews, your mindset and vocabulary will transfer directly into the exam.

Actionable takeaway:
Review your last project and map it to the five Well-Architected pillars (and the new Sustainability pillar). Write down specific examples where you automated reliability, security checks, or operational excellence—those stories become your mental “flashcards.”

Who Should Take the DOP-C02

You don’t need another AWS certification first. Since 2019, AWS removed formal prerequisites; you can sit a Professional-level exam directly. That said, the exam is designed for people who already live in AWS and DevOps day-to-day.

You’re a great fit if you:

• Operate production workloads on AWS and care about uptime, cost, and security.

• Write or maintain CI/CD pipelines (build, test, deploy) with rollback strategies.

• Use IaC (CloudFormation/CDK) and configuration management at scale.

• Monitor and troubleshoot with CloudWatch/X-Ray and have incident playbooks.

• Govern multi-account environments with AWS Organizations/Control Tower and guardrails.

Actionable takeaway:
If you’re newer to AWS, spend 2–4 weeks hardening your fundamentals (IAM, VPC, EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda) before diving into DOP-C02 prep. It will shorten your total study time.

Exam Basics: Format, Time, Languages, and Scoring

Format: Multiple choice and multiple response (some unscored items may be included).
Time: 180 minutes.
Questions: 75.
Languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese.
Delivery: Pearson VUE test centers or online proctoring.
Price: USD $300 (regional currencies available).

AWS scores using a scaled score from 100–1000; for Professional-level exams the minimum passing scaled score is 750. Your certificate is valid for three years, and certified individuals receive a 50% discount voucher for a future AWS Certification exam—handy for recertification or your next credential.

Actionable takeaway:
Decide your test window now. Booking a date 8–12 weeks out creates healthy pressure and helps you reverse-engineer a study plan.

The DOP-C02 Blueprint: Domains and Weights

Knowing the “weight” of each domain helps you prioritize study time. For DOP-C02, AWS defines the following domains:

• SDLC Automation – 22%

• Configuration Management & Infrastructure as Code – 17%

• Resilient Cloud Solutions – 15%

• Monitoring & Logging – 15%

• Incident & Event Response – 14%

• Security & Compliance – 17%

What this means for you:

Focus first on SDLC Automation and Security & Compliance—together they account for 39% of the exam.
Follow with Monitoring & Logging and Incident Response (29% combined), because real production stories cling to these topics.
Round things out with the IaC/Config and Resilience areas; they’re still significant and tie into everything else.

Actionable takeaway:
For each domain, write one paragraph on how your current environment addresses it. Then list two weaknesses. These become your “study targets” each week.

In-Scope Services: What to Actually Study

AWS publishes an “in-scope” list for DOP-C02. Use it like a grocery list for your labs. Highlights include:

• CI/CD: CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline

• IaC/Management: AWS CDK, CloudFormation, Systems Manager, Service Catalog

• Compute/Containers/Serverless: EC2/Auto Scaling, ECS/EKS/Fargate, Lambda

• Networking/Delivery: VPC, Elastic Load Balancing, Route 53

• Storage: S3, EBS, EFS

• Observability/Auditing: CloudWatch, X-Ray, CloudTrail, AWS Config

• Security/Governance: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Security Hub, WAF, Organizations, Control Tower, AWS Backup

• Integration/Orchestration: EventBridge, SNS, SQS, Step Functions

• Artifact/Images: ECR, EC2 Image Builder

Note: The exam emphasizes AWS-native tooling (CloudFormation/CDK for IaC; Code* for pipelines). Concepts from third-party tools may be useful for your day job, but focus your exam prep on AWS services.

Actionable takeaway:
Build a “study lab” checklist: one item for each service above. Don’t read about them—touch them. Deploy, break, fix, automate.

How to Study: A Practical Plan That Works

Here’s a realistic 8–12 week approach. Shorten or extend based on your background.

Week 0: Set the stage
Book your exam 8–12 weeks out.
Read the exam guide front-to-back and skim the domain-specific pages. Create a gap list by domain.
Add key whitepapers to your queue, especially “Practicing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AWS.”

Weeks 1–3: SDLC Automation + IaC fundamentals
Build two end-to-end pipelines:

• Containers: CodeCommit → CodeBuild → ECR → ECS/EKS (with blue/green via CodeDeploy).

• Serverless: SAM/CloudFormation → CodePipeline → Lambda API (canary deploy).
  Implement automatic unit/integration tests, artifact signing, and encryption.
  Parameterize everything; practice rollback and promotion across dev/test/prod.
  Track build/test/deploy metrics in CloudWatch and emit custom metrics.

Weeks 4–5: Monitoring/Logging and Resilience
Set SLOs (availability, latency) and wire alarms to actionable runbooks.
Centralize logs/metrics/traces: CloudWatch Logs + metrics/alarms, X-Ray traces, and dashboards.
Add auto scaling, health checks, and self-healing patterns. Practice region AZ failure simulations.

Weeks 6–7: Security & Compliance + Incident Response
IAM least privilege, identity boundaries, and permission guardrails.
Encrypt at rest/in transit using KMS; rotate keys; manage secrets properly.
Enable AWS Config rules and conformance packs; aggregate into an audit account.
Surface findings in Security Hub; add WAF rules at the edge where appropriate.
Build incident workflows: EventBridge routes → SNS/SQS → Systems Manager Automation.
Document and drill your rollback, failover, and containment procedures.

Weeks 8–10: Close gaps and pressure-test
Do the official practice question set in AWS Skill Builder and identify weak domains.
Revisit the CI/CD whitepaper sections on blue/green, canary, and pipeline anti-patterns.
Take two timed mock exams at 150–165 minutes (give yourself less time than the real thing).

Final 72 hours: Taper and sharpen
Review your notes and “what could go wrong” lists for each service.
Light lab work only; no new topics.
Sleep, hydrate, and plan your exam logistics.

Actionable takeaway:
Keep a “troubleshooting diary.” Every time you fix a pipeline, permission, or deployment bug, write the cause, the signal you saw, and the fix. Many exam questions feel like mini post-mortems.

Official Resources Worth Your Time

• DOP-C02 exam guide + domain pages: clear scope and task statements.

• In-scope services list: your definitive “what to study” map.

• AWS Skill Builder: Exam Prep course, official practice questions, Builder Labs, and Jam events.

• CI/CD on AWS whitepaper: deep dives on patterns like blue/green and canary.

Actionable takeaway:
Don’t skip official practice questions. They calibrate you to AWS’s question style and catch blind spots early.

Costs, Policies, and Ways to Save

Exam fee: USD $300 (regional currencies shown at checkout).
Retakes: 14-day wait after a failed attempt; each attempt is full price.
Validity: 3 years.
Perk: After you earn any AWS Certification, a 50% discount voucher appears in your AWS Certification Account for a future exam.

Actionable takeaway:
If your employer has training budget, ask them to sponsor the exam and a Skill Builder subscription or voucher. Show them projected return (next section) and outline your study plan.

Career ROI: What You Can Expect

Beyond the knowledge boost, certification tends to correlate with confidence, role mobility, and compensation. Pearson VUE’s 2025 highlights report notes that many candidates reported promotions and salary growth following certification (results vary by region and role). Independent salary lists often place AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional among high-value cloud certs—use those figures as directional, not guarantees.

Where this cert shines:

• Senior DevOps/Platform/SRE roles

• Build/Release Engineering and CloudOps

• Technical Leadership roles owning automation, governance, and reliability

Actionable takeaway:
Update your CV with quantified achievements tied to DevOps outcomes: “Cut mean time to restore by 38% via canary + automated rollback,” “Reduced change failure rate to <5% with pre-prod gating tests,” “Cut build times by 45% through caching and parallelization.”

Real-World Skill Map: From Exam Topics to Daily Wins

Use this mapping to connect what you study to what you’ll deliver on the job.

SDLC Automation (22%)
Real world: Faster, safer releases. Reproducible pipelines. Automated rollbacks.
Key tools: CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, ECR, ECS/EKS, Lambda.
Exam-worthy scenario: Multi-stage pipelines with approvals, tests, artifact integrity, and deployment strategies.

Configuration Management & IaC (17%)
Real world: Versioned, reviewable environments; drift detection; consistent provisioning.
Key tools: CloudFormation, AWS CDK, Systems Manager (State Manager, Parameter Store), Service Catalog.
Exam-worthy scenario: Multi-account, multi-Region deployments with guardrails and repeatability.

Resilient Cloud Solutions (15%)
Real world: Graceful degradation, auto scaling, health checks, failure isolation.
Key tools: ALB/NLB, Auto Scaling, Route 53, S3/EFS/EBS snapshots, AWS Backup, multi-AZ design.
Exam-worthy scenario: Blue/green cutovers, region-aware failover patterns.

Monitoring & Logging (15%)
Real world: SLO-based alerts, root cause analysis, proactive capacity planning.
Key tools: CloudWatch metrics/logs/alarms, X-Ray tracing, CloudTrail, dashboards.
Exam-worthy scenario: Alert fatigue reduction; instrumenting business + technical metrics.

Incident & Event Response (14%)
Real world: Automated detection, containment, recovery, and learning.
Key tools: EventBridge, SNS/SQS, Systems Manager Automation/Run Command, Lambda responders.
Exam-worthy scenario: Auto-isolation runbooks and rollback triggers tied to health signals.

Security & Compliance (17%)
Real world: Guardrails that scale, auditable changes, least privilege by default.
Key tools: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Config, Security Hub, WAF, Organizations/Control Tower.
Exam-worthy scenario: Detect-prevent-respond lifecycle with evidence captured automatically.

Most of these tools and scenarios appear in the in-scope services list for DOP-C02.

Actionable takeaway:
Create a one-page “runbook of runbooks”: choose your top three incidents and write a flow for detection → containment → rollback/recovery → communication → post-mortem. Practice each once.

Exam-Day Game Plan

Before you start: Confirm your ID and testing environment; finish the Pearson VUE system checks if testing online.
Time management: 75 questions in 180 minutes ≈ 2.4 minutes per question. Aim for 1.8–2.0 minutes on your first pass; flag long scenario questions for later.
Reading technique: Parse the “ask” first, then scan the context. Look for answer choices that are secure by default, automated, and operationally sound.
Elimination: Knock out answers that violate least privilege, skip encryption, ignore health checks, or rely on manual steps in production.
Final pass: Use the last 10–15 minutes for flagged items; trust your first instincts unless you spot a clear AWS best-practice conflict.

Actionable takeaway:
Write a “bad smells” checklist (e.g., plaintext secrets, manual prod edits, no rollback path, single-AZ). If an answer smells like that, it’s probably wrong.

FAQs

Q1: Is DOP-C02 the current version of the exam?
Yes. DOP-C02 is the active AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam, with details on time, format, price, languages, and delivery listed on AWS’s overview page.

Q2: How many questions and how long is the exam?
You have 75 questions and 180 minutes to complete them.

Q3: What score do I need to pass?
AWS uses scaled scoring; Professional-level exams require a minimum passing scaled score of 750.

Q4: Do I need an Associate-level AWS certification first?
No. AWS removed prerequisites in 2019; you can take a Professional exam directly.

Q5: How long is my certification valid?
Three years. You can recertify by passing the latest version of the exam. You’ll also receive a 50% discount voucher for a future exam as a certification benefit.

Conclusion

If you’re the person teams call when production needs to be fast, safe, and always up, DOP-C02 is built for you. Treat the exam blueprint as a real-world skill map: ship code with confidence, measure what matters, automate guardrails, and design for failure. Book your date, build your two pipelines, drill your runbooks, and keep your study tight around AWS-native tools. When you’re ready, the certification won’t just be a badge—it’ll be a reflection of the engineering habits you practice every day.

About FlashGenius

FlashGenius is your AI-powered certification prep companion offering:

• Learning Path – AI-guided step-by-step progression tailored to your certification goals

• Domain Practice – Focused practice by specific domains with detailed AI explanations

• Mixed Practice – Comprehensive questions across all domains for complete preparation

• Exam Simulation – Full-length practice exams mimicking real certification test conditions

• Flash Cards – Interactive flashcards for quick review and memorization of key concepts

• Smart Review – AI-based concept clarification focusing on your specific mistakes and weak areas

• Common Mistakes – Learn from mistakes made by thousands of users to avoid common pitfalls

• Pomodoro Timer – Built-in productivity timer to optimize your study sessions and focus

• Question Translation – Translate any practice question to 9 languages instantly for better understanding

• Study Resources – Comprehensive collection of study materials, guides, and resources for each certification

Start your AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional practice today at FlashGenius.net and prepare with AI-guided learning, domain-based drills, and full-length simulations for complete exam readiness.