How to Pass the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional on the First Attempt — Exam Topics, Questions, and Study Plan
In today’s article, I’ll share my experience on how to prepare for — and pass — the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer — Professional exam on the first attempt.
I hope this helps anyone preparing for the exam to pass it on the first try.
In this article, we will cover the following points:
- About the Exam
- Exam Preparation & Study Plan
- Important Topics that Appeared a Lot in the Exam
- Courses and Study Materials
- Time Management During the Exam
- What’s Next
What is the exam about?
The AWS DevOps Engineer — Professional is one of the three AWS Professional certifications, along with Solutions Architect Professional and Generative AI Professional.
This certification showcases advanced technical expertise in provisioning, operating, and managing distributed application systems on AWS.
The exam validates your skills in designing, automating, monitoring, and operating scalable and reliable systems on AWS.
The exam duration is 180 minutes, with 75 questions, and costs $300.
You can also get 50% off if you have a voucher from a previously passed AWS certification.
In terms of difficulty:
I have passed all AWS certifications except the Advanced Networking Specialty (planned next), and so far, this exam has been the most difficult one in my experience.
It covers a wide range of services, topics, and architectures — both in breadth and depth.
How did I prepare and study?
Preparation took me about one month, studying at least an hour every day, and more during weekends.
It did not take me long to prepare because in the previous three months I passed:
- CloudOps Associate
- Developer Associate
- Data Engineer Associate
- GAI Engineer Professional
So most of the knowledge was still fresh in my head.
As you know, the material of the Developer Associate is very close to the Professional level, but the Professional exam goes deeper into practical details that are hard to answer without real experience.
I always follow the same study plan:
- Cover the exam material
- Practice — get your hands dirty in the AWS Console
- Visualizations — create diagrams using draw.io, PowerPoint, or Lucid chart
- Practice questions
Hands-on practice helps information stick in your mind, and visualizing architectures helps you fully understand the flow of the solution.
I highly recommend drawing the architecture yourself.
What are some important topics that appeared a lot on the exam?
Organizational setup is a core subject.
You should understand AWS Organizations and how to configure services at the organization level, including:
- CloudTrail
- AWS Config
- Firewall Manager
- Organization trails
- Centralized logging
- Multi-account permissions
Automation and remediation also appear frequently.
Many questions involve detecting bad practices and automatically fixing them.
Most of the time, the correct answer includes:
- AWS Config rules
- SSM Automation documents
- EventBridge triggers
CI/CD services are very important:
- CodePipeline
- CodeBuild
- CodeDeploy
- CodeArtifact
You should also understand how to run CodePipeline/CodeDeploy across accounts and what permissions are required in each account. (Exam Question)
Elastic Beanstalk appears in several questions.
Deployment strategies are also a major topic, and they appear in many exam scenarios.
Make sure you understand the different deployment options supported by AWS services, especially rolling, blue/green, and canary deployments.
You should also know how deployment works in services like CodeDeploy, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS, and Lambda, and when to choose each strategy depending on availability, rollback requirements, and downtime constraints.
EKSÂ also appeared more than I expected.
I thought there would be a few questions, but I saw around five questions about it.
If you are not a Kubernetes person, make sure you at least understand:
- EKS architecture
- Node groups
- Metrics used for scaling
- Integration with CloudWatch and Auto Scaling
EventBridge is one of AWS’s favorite services now, and it appears frequently in the exam.
Also, now that CodeCommit is retired, questions refer to other Git-compatible services instead.
CloudWatch appears in almost every AWS exam, and the newer favorite service — EventBridge — also shows up a lot.
Of course, the exam is not limited to these services, but these were the dominant ones in my experience.
What are some good courses and study materials?
I studied using the Udemy course by Stephane Maarek — great material.
It costs about $37 per month, and honestly, you don’t need more than one month if you already have experience.
I highly recommend working through the practice questions to get good exposure to each service’s features.
To be honest, I did not complete the whole course.
Because in the previous two months I passed multiple certifications, including Developer Associate, much of the material was already familiar.
After that, I moved to SkillBuilder, where I solved the practice questions and the full official practice exam (75 questions).
SkillBuilder costs about $30 per month.
How do I have good time management during the exam?
The exam has 75 questions in 3 hours!
I am a slow reader 😅, and I finished the last question with only 20 seconds left 😱 — no time to review.
Do not spend too much time on questions you are not sure about.
Choose the answer you think is most likely correct, flag the question, and move on.
It is very tempting to reread the question many times until you figure out the answer, but if you do that for every question, you may not finish the exam.
Remember:
- Questions are long
- Answers are long
- There are many scenario-based questions
Make sure you answer every question first.
If you have time left, then review the flagged ones.
Do not skip answering any question, because you might forget to come back to it later.
Overall, I would say this exam is tougher than the other Professional exams.
But if you prepare well, even when you are unsure, you can often eliminate two wrong answers and choose between the remaining ones using experience and logic.
With good preparation, passing on the first attempt is very possible.
What’s next?
This was my fourth certification in 2026, and my fifth in the last three months.
Now I am preparing for my last certification —
AWS Advanced Networking Specialty.
Once I pass it, I will get the Golden Jacket 🧥, which is my goal for this year.
Always celebrate your achievements.
They are the fuel that keeps you moving toward bigger goals.
Surround yourself with people who are happy for your success.
There is a saying that you become the average of the people you surround yourself with, and I find that very true.
After joining the AWS Ambassador community, I saw many peers with the Golden Jacket, and that inspired me to go for it as well.
Good vibes keep you productive 😌.
Author
Noor Sabahi | Senior AI & Cloud Engineer | AWS Ambassador
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