Databricks Data Engineer Professional certification

[adrianhernandez]

Hello,

I recently passed the Databricks Data Engineer Associate certification. I have 2 years of Databricks experience in AWS. I'd like to eventually take the Databricks Data Engineer Professional certification.

1. Are the questions in the Databricks Data Engineer Professional certification completely different then the Associate's exam or is there some overlap?
2. What are the main differences in terms of hands on skills/experience between both exams?
3. Does the Professional exam involve lots of Python knowledge?

[Shua42]

I recently passed the DE professional, and happy to shed some light here.

1. There is a fair amount of overlap in the content, but I can't for certain if there are specific question overlaps. The questions follow a similar theme, but the professional exam assumes more expertise which will show up in the difficulty and granularity of the questions.

2. The professional exam requires more experience, which comes through in questions that test for knowledge of spark syntax, best practices and streaming fundamentals. I recommend reviewing the topics in the exam guide: https://www.databricks.com/sites/default/files/2025-02/databricks-certified-data-engineer-profession...

3. There are a number of python-specific questions, which are mostly around pyspark.

My biggest recommendations would be to 1) Take the course mentioned in the exam guide and 2) Find some practice exams online. Udemy has a number of courses with practice exams. They won't correlate directly to the exam questions, especially since it was recently updated, but it will help cover the information that the exams typically cover.

Good luck!