How to Become a DevOps Engineer: A Complete Certification Guide
DevOps engineering is where the choice of exam format matters most. Five of the nine papers on this ladder are hands‑on — CKA, CKS, RHCSA, HashiCorp Terraform Associate delivered as a proctored practical, and to a lesser extent AZ-400 — and the other four are traditional multiple choice. Preparation that ignores the difference between the two burns money on the wrong revision.
This is the ladder we route platform engineers and pipeline specialists through. Every question count and time limit is drawn from the Linux Foundation and HashiCorp certification pages verbatim, and the domain weights come from each vendor's own published curriculum. We recommend pairing this with The Complete Network Engineer Certification Ladder (CompTIA to Cisco).
The ladder at a glance
| Stage | Code | Exam | Questions | Time | Pace |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start here | CLF-C02 | AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner | 65 | 90 min | 83s/q |
AZ-900 | Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) | 50 | 100 min | 120s/q | |
| Core | CKA | Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) | 60 | 120 min | 120s/q |
— | HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate | 57 | 60 min | 63s/q | |
SOA-C03 | AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate | 65 | 130 min | 120s/q | |
| Go deeper | DOP-C02 | AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional | 75 | 180 min | 144s/q |
AZ-400 | Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) | 50 | 100 min | 120s/q | |
CKS | Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) | 60 | 120 min | 120s/q | |
— | Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer | 60 | 120 min | 120s/q |
The whole ladder costs $108.91 in pack pricing today across the 9 sittable exams — entry pack per exam, bought as you reach each rung, no subscription.
Start here: sit the cloud fundamentals of the platform you deploy to
If your pipeline lands on AWS take CLF-C02. If it lands on Azure take AZ-900. Sitting both is fine, sitting neither is a common source of failure on the associate papers later — the CI/CD questions on AZ-400 assume you already know what an Azure resource group is.
Core: pick between orchestration and provisioning
CKA is 60 questions in 120 minutes, all hands‑on in a live cluster, passing at 66%. HashiCorp Terraform Associate (TA-003) tests IaC discipline. AWS Developer Associate (DVA-C02) is the multiple‑choice half of the pair. Pick against the stack you actually run. Before moving on, consider reading Mapping the Data Engineer Career Path: Which Exams Matter?.
Go deeper: CKS gates on CKA
You cannot book Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist without holding an active CKA. That fact settles the ordering question for anyone aiming at platform security work: CKA first, always. AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C02) and Azure DevOps Solutions Expert (AZ-400) are the provider‑native equivalents.
Practise against the paper you are booked for. A full-length Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) mock test reproduces the published question count and time limit exactly. Buy a mock test pack and find out where your preparation actually stands.
How do I pass Certified Kubernetes Administrator? The specifics
The flagship paper on this ladder is Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA). 60 questions in 120 minutes (120s per question). Reported as domain bands rather than a single score, so aim for “Target” or above on every domain. The single most useful thing to know before you sit it is the domain breakdown, because studying in proportion to the published weights is the highest‑return decision you can make. We cover this in depth in How to Become a Penetration Tester in 8 Certification Steps.
To schedule that preparation around the time you have, use a free CKA study plan that lays out each week by topic.
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Troubleshooting | ██████████ 30% |
| Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration | ████████ 25% |
| Services & Networking | ███████ 20% |
| Workloads & Scheduling | █████ 15% |
| Storage | ███ 10% |
If you are searching for a “Certified Kubernetes Administrator question dump” or a shortcut, understand what that trades off: dumps are frequently stale, are often against a retired exam version, and breach the candidate agreement you sign at the start of the paper. A full-length practise exam for Certified Kubernetes Administrator written to the current published outline is the legitimate version of what a dump promises, and unlike the dump it teaches you the material you paid to learn.
How to use this ladder
Sit each rung in order. The exams higher up assume the instincts the exams below teach, and skipping a rung is visible in the resulting score. If you are wondering how do I pass the paper you are booked for, the single most useful step is to sit a full-length practise exam for that exact code end to end — every exam page on this site publishes the code, the question count, the time limit and the domain weightings from the awarding body's own outline.
Buy a mock test pack for the paper you are working on next, or see the full certification catalogue to match a rung to the role you are targeting.
Validate your knowledge with HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate practice test that cover every domain the exam blueprint lists.
For CKA, a free CKA readiness check gives you a quick read on your weak topics before you book.