Certification guide
The AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02) credential is where AWS certification stops being a cloud-overview test and starts being a developer test. It validates that you can build, deploy, and troubleshoot production-ready applications on AWS, writing code that calls AWS service APIs through SDKs, packaging it through a CI/CD pipeline, securing its data and credentials properly, and debugging it with the AWS-native observability tools when something goes wrong at 3 a.m. If the Cloud Practitioner exam is about knowing what services are, this one is about knowing what happens when a real application pattern meets a real AWS service behavior.
The exam targets developers with roughly a year of hands-on AWS experience who can already write code in a high-level language and are comfortable with Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, and a CI/CD pipeline. The current exam guide is the December 2024 revision. That revision consolidated the knowledge and skills lists under each task and added skills on Amazon Q Developer, resilient application code for third-party integrations (retry logic, circuit breakers, error handling), and event-driven patterns with Amazon EventBridge; it also dropped AWS Copilot and Amazon CodeGuru from the in-scope services list. It did not change the four-domain structure or the weights. Materials aligned to the current outline remain valid; anything dating to the retired DVA-C01 five-domain structure is out of date.
The four domains are Development with AWS Services, Security, Deployment, and Troubleshooting and Optimization. The Development domain is the largest single slice at 32% and Security is 26%; together they carry more than half the exam, and both reward implementation judgment more than definition recall. Deployment (24%) leans on CI/CD services, IaC (CloudFormation, SAM, CDK), and deployment strategies like canary and blue/green. Troubleshooting (18%) is the smallest domain by weight but tends to produce disproportionate score damage because those questions require reasoning from logs, metrics, and X-Ray traces rather than picking a service from a list.
Development with AWS Services
Domain 1 · 32%Writing application code that talks to AWS, not configuring things in the console. Architectural patterns (event-driven, microservices, choreography vs. orchestration, fanout), idempotency, stateful vs. stateless, tightly vs. loosely coupled components, and fault-tolerant design (retries with exponential backoff and jitter, dead-letter queues). Lambda function configuration (memory, concurrency, timeout, layers, extensions, destinations, triggers) and event-source mapping. Data-store choice and use: DynamoDB keys and high-cardinality partitions, query vs. scan, strongly vs. eventually consistent reads, S3 tiers and lifecycle rules, caching strategies (write-through, read-through, lazy loading, TTL) with ElastiCache and DynamoDB Accelerator. Creating and maintaining APIs and writing unit tests with tools like AWS SAM.
Security
Domain 2 · 26%Authenticating and authorizing users and services correctly. Identity federation with SAML, OIDC, and Amazon Cognito; the difference between Cognito user pools and identity pools; bearer tokens (JWT, OAuth, AWS STS). Writing least-privilege IAM policies (principal, resource, and service policies) and knowing when to assume a role instead of embedding credentials. Encryption at rest and in transit; AWS-managed vs. customer-managed KMS keys; client-side vs. server-side encryption; key rotation and cross-account key use. Handling sensitive data properly with AWS Secrets Manager and Systems Manager Parameter Store, encrypting environment variables that carry PII or PHI, and never letting credentials leak into logs, code, or config files.
Deployment
Domain 3 · 24%Packaging application artifacts and pushing them to environments through CI/CD. Lambda deployment packages, layers, versions, and aliases; container images and ECR; access to configuration via AppConfig, Secrets Manager, and Parameter Store. Testing in development environments with mocks, API Gateway stages, and stage variables. Automating deployment with CodePipeline (manual and automated approvals), CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CloudFormation, AWS SAM, AWS CDK, and Amplify. Understanding deployment strategies (canary, linear, blue/green, rolling) when each fits, how rollbacks work, and how labels and branches drive version and release management.
Troubleshooting and Optimization
Domain 4 · 18%Root cause analysis and observability. Reading CloudWatch metrics, logs, and dashboards; querying with CloudWatch Logs Insights; interpreting X-Ray traces and service maps; recognizing common HTTP status codes and common SDK exceptions. Instrumenting code for structured logging, embedded metric format (EMF), custom metrics, and distributed tracing annotations. Setting notification alerts on quotas and deployment events. Optimization work: profiling Lambda memory and cost, choosing between SQS and SNS or between subscription filter policies, and using request-header-based caching in CloudFront or API Gateway to cut latency and origin load.
Each Certifym practice exam mirrors the real DVA-C02 blueprint at set scale: sixty-five questions per set, weighted twenty-one / seventeen / fifteen / twelve across Development / Security / Deployment / Troubleshooting, with a one-hundred-thirty-minute timer and a 72% pass mark, the honest raw-score equivalent of the 720-out-of-1000 scaled score AWS uses on the live exam. Every question presents one most-correct answer with three plausible near-miss distractors; the explanation names the near-miss and justifies why the winner beats it, so a passing run here reflects reasoning, not luck on the heavy questions, before you sit for the real thing.
AWS Certified Developer Associate - Practice Exam
Original 65-question practice exam for the AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) certification, blueprint-weighted across all four domains (Development with AWS Services, Security, Deployment, Troubleshooting and…
Subscribe to startFrequently asked questions about DVA-C02
What is the AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02) exam?
DVA-C02 is the current version of the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam. It validates that you can build, deploy, and troubleshoot production-ready applications on AWS: writing code against AWS service APIs and SDKs, packaging it through a CI/CD pipeline, securing its data and credentials, and debugging it with the AWS-native observability tools. It sits one step above the foundational AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner and is the associate-level credential aimed at people who write the code rather than design the architecture.
How many questions are on the DVA-C02 exam?
The exam contains 65 items: 50 are scored and 15 are unscored items AWS uses to calibrate future exam forms, and you will not know which are which. Questions are a mix of multiple choice and multiple response, and most are scenario-driven, asking what a real application does when it meets a real AWS service behavior.
What is the passing score for DVA-C02?
AWS scores the live exam on a 100-to-1000 scale with 720 as the cut score. That scaled score is not a raw percentage, so as an honest raw-score equivalent we set the pass mark on each Certifym practice set at 72%.
How long is the DVA-C02 exam and how much does it cost?
The exam runs 130 minutes and costs $150 USD. It is delivered at a Pearson VUE testing center or as an online proctored exam.
What experience do I need before taking DVA-C02?
The target candidate has roughly a year of hands-on experience developing and maintaining applications on AWS and can already write code in a high-level language. You should be comfortable with Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, and a CI/CD pipeline before you sit. The exam does not test whether you can configure services in the console; it tests whether you know how your code should behave against them.
What domains does DVA-C02 cover, and how are they weighted?
Four domains: Development with AWS Services (32%), Security (26%), Deployment (24%), and Troubleshooting and Optimization (18%). Development and Security together carry more than half the exam. Troubleshooting is the smallest domain by weight but tends to cost candidates the most points, because those questions require reasoning from logs, metrics, and X-Ray traces rather than recognizing a service name.
What changed in the latest DVA-C02 exam guide?
The December 2024 revision of the exam guide consolidated the separate knowledge and skills lists under each task into a single list of skills, added skills on Amazon Q Developer, resilient application code for third-party integrations (retry logic, circuit breakers, error handling), and event-driven patterns with Amazon EventBridge, and removed AWS Copilot and Amazon CodeGuru from the in-scope services list. The four domains and their weights did not change. Anything built to the retired DVA-C01 five-domain outline is out of date.
How long is the DVA-C02 certification valid?
The credential is on a three-year renewal cycle, so plan to recertify within three years of passing.
How do I prepare for the DVA-C02 exam?
Work through scenario-based practice that matches the blueprint rather than flashcard recall. Each Certifym set contains 65 original questions distributed to the current DVA-C02 blueprint: 21 on Development with AWS Services, 17 on Security, 15 on Deployment, and 12 on Troubleshooting and Optimization, with a 130-minute timer and a 72% pass mark. Every question has one most-correct answer and three plausible near-miss distractors, and the explanation names the near-miss and says why the winner beats it.
What is the difference between DVA-C02 and SAA-C03?
Both are associate-level AWS credentials, but they test different jobs. Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) asks you to choose between services under a stated requirement and defend the trade-off. Developer – Associate (DVA-C02) asks what your code does once those services are chosen: how it calls them, how it handles retries and failures, how it is packaged and deployed, and how you debug it when it misbehaves. Many candidates hold both; developers usually find DVA-C02 the more natural first step.
Trademark notice & independence. AWS®, Amazon Web Services®, AWS Certified Developer – Associate™, and all related marks are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Certifym.net and Certifym Exam Services, LLC are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon Web Services, Inc. The DVA-C02 exam blueprint, domain names, and weightings are the property of Amazon Web Services; candidates should download the official, current exam guide directly from aws.amazon.com/certification.
All questions, answers, and explanations on Certifym are original content created for practice purposes. They are not actual AWS examination questions and are not represented as such. Practicing with these materials does not guarantee a passing result on any live certification exam.