Overview
The AWS Developer Associate exam is meant to validate your technical proficiency in developing, optimizing, packaging, and deploying AWS Cloud-based applications using CI/CD workflows, and identifying and resolving application issues related to AWS Services. Software engineers with a AWS Developer Associate Certification can experience an increase of pay from 20% to 30% with an average annual salary of $98,000 to $130,000 in the U.S.
Reflection
My process to become a Certified AWS Developer Associate, took about three to four months of focused studying. My first instinct was to prepare using the AWS-provided ‘Developer Learning Plan’ which is a waste of time in relation to the other resources available. The ‘Developer Learning Plan’ merely introduces concepts at a surface level that does not represent the exam questions well. The second tool I found was the ‘Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2025 DVA-CO2’ Udemy course taught by Stephane Maarek who is a reputable AWS instructor with a focused and concise style of teaching. The course covers all the content required for an AWS Developer Associate in a clear and engaging fashion. The course also provides hands-on walk-throughs which are essential for an AWS Developer Associate to enhance their understanding of AWS concepts. The course is 33 hours long, which means that it will realistically take many months to complete. I implemented detailed note-taking with this course and created a Quizlet study guide for every section in the course. You can find my Quizlet study guides here: https://quizlet.com/user/owendibacco04/folders/aws-developer-associate?i=5uvpzi&x=1xqY. I also found it helpful to look over these notes before the exam to refresh my memory about key concepts. The final resource I used, was the ‘Practice Exams | AWS Certified Developer Associate 2024’ Udemy course which provides 6 practice exams that represent the AWS Developer Associate exam well. Each practice exam is 65 questions long and takes around 1.5 to 2 hours to complete. The questions on these practice tests are much more complex than the actual exam questions, but they are good for adapting you to AWS-style questions and often contain common test questions that might be on the exam. Leading up to my exam day, I would complete one practice test a day to condition my mind to the style of the exam.
The Exam Process
I took my exam from home through Pearson VUE, which is a company that provides online proctoring. To take an exam through OnVUE, you must verify to your proctor that your testing space is clear using your webcam. If you are under 18 years old, you will need to have your guardian provide some form of identification. The test is 65 questions long and allows you 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete. The questions are all multiple-choice with one or two options to select and are either in the format of scenarios in which you need to find the solution to an AWS development-related problem or where you need to select the AWS resource that provides certain functionality. The answers to the exam questions are either definitely the clear answer, or they are wrong; the exam questions do not necessarily try to trick you. The prompts for each question on the exam are concise compared to what mock questions represent, and keywords are used to help reveal the correct answer. Given that you have spent adequate time and effort learning the required AWS content using the ‘Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2025 DVA-CO2’ Udemy course and practicing exam-style questions using the ‘Practice Exams | AWS Certified Developer Associate 2024’ course, the exam should go smoothly but still will be time-consuming. For me, I found the exam questions simple, but I still only finished the exam with about 5 minutes remaining. If you are unsure about an answer to a question, simply flag the question and move on so that you don’t waste too much time and thinking capacity on a single problem.
Conclusion
The AWS Developer Associate exam should be simple provided that you spend adequate time and effort preparing.
