AWS Developer Associate Exam Prep

The Developer Associate exam focuses on writing code that interacts with AWS services. Expect deep questions on DynamoDB (table design, GSIs, LSIs, capacity modes), Lambda (invocation types, concurrency, layers, error handling), API Gateway (REST vs HTTP APIs, authorization, throttling), and the AWS SDK/CLI. You'll also see questions on S3 event notifications, SQS/SNS integration patterns, and Step Functions for orchestration.

Unlike the Solutions Architect exam which focuses on architecture, this exam tests implementation details: how to use the AWS SDK, how environment variables work in Lambda, how to configure X-Ray for distributed tracing, and how IAM roles are assumed by services. The deployment domain (24%) covers CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and container services like ECS and Fargate.

Developers with existing AWS experience can often pass this exam in 3-5 weeks with focused study. The most important topics are DynamoDB (it dominates the exam), Lambda, API Gateway, and the deployment tools. Make sure you understand DynamoDB partition keys, sort keys, global secondary indexes, and the difference between eventually consistent and strongly consistent reads.

Practice with code-level questions — the exam presents code snippets and asks you to identify errors or choose the correct API call. If you've used the AWS SDK in any language, you'll find many questions intuitive. Focus on understanding error handling patterns, retry logic, and the differences between synchronous and asynchronous Lambda invocations.

The Developer Associate certification validates that you can build production applications on AWS, making it highly relevant for backend engineers, full-stack developers, and anyone building serverless or container-based applications. It demonstrates proficiency with the services developers use daily: Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, SQS, and the deployment pipeline tools.

This certification is particularly valuable for developers transitioning from on-premises development to cloud-native architectures. It pairs well with the Solutions Architect Associate for developers who also design systems, or with the DevOps Engineer Professional for those interested in CI/CD and infrastructure automation.