Is the Data Engineer Learning Plan enough to pass the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate e

[Payal_Pa]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently preparing for the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate exam and have started the Data Engineer Learning Plan on Databricks Academy (11 e-learning courses, about 16 hours in total). It covers topics like:

• Data Ingestion with Lakeflow Connect
• Deploy Workloads with Lakeflow Jobs
• Build Data Pipelines with Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines

I'd love some advice from those who have already taken the exam:

1. Is completing this learning plan enough to clear the Associate exam, or are there gaps I should cover separately?
2. How much hands-on practice in a Databricks workspace would you recommend alongside the courses?
3. Are there any other resources you found helpful, such as the official exam guide, practice tests, or documentation sections?
4. Were there any topics on the exam that felt less covered in the learning plan?

Any tips or study strategies would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Best regards

[VladTamas]

Hi! Good question. I've been through the Databricks certification path myself, up to Data Engineer Professional. The learning plan is a solid base, but I wouldn't rely on it alone.

What worked for me:

1. Download the current exam guide: www.databricks.com/sites/default/files. Go through every objective and mark it green, yellow or red based on how confident you are.
2. For every yellow or red objective, build a small notebook that actually does it. The Free Edition is enough for this. Reading about Auto Loader is one thing, but debugging it once makes it stick.
3. Focus your time where the points are. Ingestion (21%) and Transformation & Modeling (22%) carry the most weight.
4. Practice the timing. It's 45 questions in 90 minutes, so about 2 minutes each. Flag the long ones and come back to them.

Good luck, and feel free to post here if a specific topic is giving you trouble!