Appeared for DEA Exam : Got the new version of the exam on May 03 !!

[SDK]

Hi,

I appeared for the Databricks Data Engineer Associate exam on May 3 at 11:00 PM EDT. I am writing to formally raise a concern regarding the mismatch between the exam content and the officially published exam guide that was applicable at the time I took the exam.

Since I took the exam before May 4, I reasonably expected it to follow the previous exam guide outlined on the Databricks Data Engineer Associate webpage. Accordingly, my preparation—including a structured course delivered by Databricks MVPs—was entirely based on the 2025 exam guide. I was consistently scoring 85% and above in mock exams aligned to that guide, so the outcome came as a genuine and unexpected shock.

The topics listed on the official DEA page at the time were:

• Databricks Intelligence Platform
• Development and Ingestion
• Data Processing & Transformations
• Productionizing Data Pipelines
• Data Governance & Quality

However, during the actual exam, I was assessed on the following topics:

• Databricks Intelligence Platform
• Development and Ingestion
• Data Transformation and Modeling
• Working with Lakeflow Jobs
• Implementing CI/CD
• Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Optimization
• Governance and Security

This represents a significant deviation from the published scope, and unfortunately placed me at a disadvantage despite thorough and diligent preparation.

Given these circumstances, I respectfully request either a refund of the exam fee or the issuance of a complimentary exam voucher, so that my skills can be evaluated under fair and clearly communicated exam conditions

[Sumit_7]

@SDK As per my understanding, the coverage of the topics are same as earlier. It's just updated a bit to fit current version of the features and tools in the Databricks ecosystem.

If you had the previous topics covered, passing the 70% mark won't be much difficult.

[SDK]

@Sumit_7  I did have them covered pretty thoroughly , but it seems like the new version of the exam was already live before I started my exam. All prep resources  including courses by databricks MVPs are updated with 2025 syllabus. 

[Leon_543]

That's rough. They really should communicate exam updates more clearly and give people a proper transition period.
The new topics (Lakeflow, CI/CD, Troubleshooting etc.) are quite different from the old guide, so I don't blame you for being caught off guard. Many prep resources were still based on the previous version.
Did you reach out to Databricks certification support directly? They sometimes issue a free retake in these situations.