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DOP-C02
DOP-C02 Amazon Web Services

DevOps Engineer Professional

The course teaches how to automate the software development lifecycle, implement IaC, build resilient cloud architectures, and establish robust monitoring, logging, and incident response on AWS.

180
Minutes
75
Questions
750/1000
Passing Score
$300
Exam Cost
9
Languages

Who Should Take This

It is designed for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and cloud architects who have at least two years of hands‑on experience managing AWS environments. These professionals seek to validate their expertise, advance their careers, and lead the design and operation of scalable, reliable delivery pipelines.

What's Covered

1 Implement CI/CD pipelines using AWS developer tools, automate testing and deployment processes, and manage source control and artifact management.
2 Define and deploy infrastructure as code using CloudFormation, CDK, and Systems Manager, and manage configuration drift and compliance.
3 Implement highly available and scalable architectures, manage fault tolerance, and design disaster recovery strategies.
4 Design and implement logging and monitoring solutions using CloudWatch, X-Ray, and related services for comprehensive observability.
5 Automate incident detection and response, manage event-driven architectures, and implement remediation runbooks.
6 Implement security controls in CI/CD pipelines, manage secrets and credentials, and enforce compliance policies across AWS environments.

Exam Structure

Question Types

  • Multiple Choice
  • Multiple Response

Scoring Method

Scaled scoring from 100 to 1000, minimum passing score of 750

Delivery Method

Pearson VUE testing center or online proctored

Recertification

Recertify every 3 years by passing the current exam or earning a higher-level AWS certification.

What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI

Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats

Course Outline

71 learning goals
1 Domain 1: SDLC Automation
4 topics

Implement CI/CD pipelines

  • Implement CodePipeline workflows with multi-stage pipelines, source integrations (CodeCommit, GitHub, S3, ECR), manual approval actions, and cross-region/cross-account pipeline configurations.
  • Implement CodeBuild projects with buildspec.yml definitions, custom build environments, Docker layer caching, build badge reporting, and artifact encryption for secure build automation.
  • Implement CodeDeploy deployment configurations with appspec.yml hooks, in-place and blue/green strategies for EC2, ECS, and Lambda targets, and automatic rollback triggers tied to CloudWatch alarms.
  • Implement CodeArtifact repositories for dependency management with upstream repository chaining, domain and repository policies, and package version lifecycle controls across build pipelines.
  • Analyze CI/CD pipeline design tradeoffs and optimize stage composition, parallelism, artifact flow, and failure handling to minimize release cycle time while maintaining quality gates.

Implement deployment strategies

  • Implement canary and linear traffic-shifting deployments using CodeDeploy with Lambda aliases, ECS task sets, and CloudWatch alarm-based automatic rollback for blast radius control.
  • Implement blue/green deployments using Route 53 weighted routing, Elastic Beanstalk environment swaps, and ECS blue/green with CodeDeploy for zero-downtime production releases.
  • Analyze deployment strategy tradeoffs across rolling, blue/green, canary, and all-at-once models and select the optimal approach based on risk tolerance, rollback speed, and infrastructure cost.
  • Design enterprise deployment governance frameworks that standardize promotion criteria, environment progression, and rollback procedures across multiple teams and accounts.

Implement testing strategies in pipelines

  • Implement automated testing stages in CodePipeline using CodeBuild test reports, integration test suites against deployed environments, and performance benchmarks with pass/fail thresholds.
  • Implement security scanning in delivery pipelines using static analysis, dependency vulnerability checks, container image scanning with ECR and Inspector, and policy-as-code validation gates.
  • Analyze test signal quality across pipeline stages and tune quality gates to balance release velocity against defect escape rate and false positive noise.

Implement source control and collaboration workflows

  • Implement branching strategies and repository workflows using CodeCommit or GitHub with branch protection, pull request reviews, and automated trigger configurations for CI/CD integration.
  • Design collaboration processes that align development, operations, and security teams around shared delivery ownership, blameless post-incident reviews, and continuous improvement cycles.
2 Domain 2: Configuration Management and IaC
4 topics

Implement infrastructure as code

  • Implement CloudFormation templates with parameterized resource definitions, nested stacks, cross-stack references, custom resources, and stack policies for controlled infrastructure provisioning.
  • Implement AWS CDK applications using constructs, stacks, and app lifecycle with synthesized CloudFormation output, context values, and asset staging for programmatic infrastructure definition.
  • Implement CloudFormation StackSets for multi-account and multi-region deployments with auto-deployment to organization units, concurrency controls, and failure tolerance settings.
  • Analyze IaC strategy tradeoffs between CloudFormation, CDK, and SAM and determine optimal template modularization, reuse patterns, and promotion workflows for enterprise environments.

Manage configuration and state

  • Implement Systems Manager Parameter Store hierarchies with versioning, KMS-encrypted SecureString parameters, and cross-account parameter sharing for centralized configuration management.
  • Implement Secrets Manager for credential lifecycle management with automatic rotation using Lambda rotation functions, cross-account access, and integration with RDS and Redshift.
  • Implement CloudFormation drift detection, change sets, and import operations to maintain infrastructure state integrity and reconcile manual changes with declared configurations.
  • Analyze configuration drift patterns and design remediation strategies that balance automated correction against change approval workflows and operational safety constraints.

Implement instance and fleet configuration management

  • Implement Systems Manager for fleet management using Run Command, State Manager associations, Patch Manager baselines, and maintenance windows for consistent instance configuration.
  • Implement AMI lifecycle management using EC2 Image Builder pipelines, golden image creation, automated testing, and distribution across accounts and regions for standardized compute baselines.
  • Design enterprise configuration management strategies that integrate Systems Manager, Config, and IaC tools to enforce consistency, detect deviations, and automate remediation across large fleets.

Implement account and governance automation

  • Implement AWS Service Catalog portfolios and products with launch constraints, TagOptions, and versioned product templates for governed self-service provisioning across teams.
  • Design workload modernization roadmaps that incrementally migrate manual provisioning to IaC, improve delivery speed, and reduce operational toil using automation maturity assessments.
3 Domain 3: Resilient Cloud Solutions
3 topics

Implement highly available and scalable architectures

  • Implement Auto Scaling configurations with launch templates, scaling policies (target tracking, step, scheduled), predictive scaling, and warm pools for elastic compute capacity management.
  • Implement multi-AZ and multi-region architectures using Elastic Load Balancing, Route 53 health checks, failover routing, and cross-region replication for high availability.
  • Implement container orchestration resilience using ECS service auto-scaling, EKS pod disruption budgets, Fargate spot capacity providers, and health check grace periods for fault-tolerant container workloads.
  • Analyze resilience design tradeoffs among complexity, cost, recovery time objectives, and recovery point objectives to select architecture patterns meeting business continuity requirements.

Implement backup and disaster recovery strategies

  • Implement AWS Backup plans with lifecycle policies, cross-region copy rules, vault lock, and compliance frameworks for centralized data protection across RDS, EBS, DynamoDB, and EFS.
  • Implement database resilience using RDS Multi-AZ failover, Aurora global databases, DynamoDB global tables, and read replica promotion for data tier high availability and disaster recovery.
  • Analyze disaster recovery strategy options (backup-restore, pilot light, warm standby, active-active) and determine the cost-optimal approach meeting stated RTO and RPO requirements.

Validate and improve operational resilience

  • Implement chaos engineering experiments using AWS Fault Injection Simulator with experiment templates, target selection, stop conditions, and IAM guardrails to validate failure handling.
  • Implement runbook and playbook automation using Systems Manager Automation documents with approval workflows, conditional branching, and cross-account execution for standardized operational procedures.
  • Design resilience improvement programs that incorporate chaos testing results, dependency risk mapping, and game day exercises to systematically close high-impact operational gaps.
4 Domain 4: Monitoring and Logging
3 topics

Configure observability data collection and storage

  • Implement CloudWatch agent configurations for custom metric collection, log streaming from EC2 and on-premises instances, and StatsD/collectd integration for unified telemetry ingestion.
  • Implement CloudWatch Logs architecture with log groups, retention policies, subscription filters, cross-account log delivery via Kinesis Data Firehose, and S3 export for long-term storage.
  • Implement X-Ray distributed tracing with service maps, trace sampling rules, annotations, metadata, and group-based filtering for request flow visualization across microservice architectures.
  • Analyze observability architecture design to optimize telemetry retention costs, cross-account visibility, query performance, and signal coverage across heterogeneous workload types.

Implement monitoring and alerting

  • Implement CloudWatch alarms with metric math expressions, composite alarms, anomaly detection bands, and SNS notification routing for proactive health degradation detection.
  • Implement CloudWatch dashboards with cross-account and cross-region widgets, metric queries, log insights widgets, and alarm status indicators for operational visibility.
  • Analyze alarm effectiveness and tune thresholds, evaluation periods, and composite alarm logic to reduce alert noise while maintaining detection sensitivity for actionable operational signals.

Automate monitoring and event management

  • Implement EventBridge rules with event patterns, input transformations, and target configurations to trigger Lambda functions, Step Functions, and SSM Automation for event-driven operational responses.
  • Implement CloudWatch Logs Insights queries and metric filters to extract operational intelligence, create custom metrics from log data, and build automated anomaly detection workflows.
  • Design enterprise observability strategies that integrate metrics, logs, traces, and events into unified operational intelligence with automated escalation and self-healing capabilities.
5 Domain 5: Incident and Event Response
3 topics

Manage event sources and alerting

  • Implement event routing and classification using EventBridge rules, SNS topic fan-out, and CloudWatch alarm severity tagging to categorize operational events by urgency and blast radius.
  • Implement AWS Health event monitoring with Organization-level Health API integration, EventBridge rules for service disruption notifications, and proactive alerting for scheduled maintenance windows.
  • Analyze alert handling effectiveness and optimize escalation criteria, notification channels, and severity classification to reduce alert fatigue and unnecessary incident churn.

Implement incident response procedures

  • Implement AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager with response plans, escalation paths, engagement contacts, and Automation runbook integration for structured incident lifecycle management.
  • Implement root cause analysis workflows using X-Ray traces, CloudWatch Logs Insights correlations, CloudTrail event history, and timeline reconstruction to isolate failure causation chains.
  • Analyze post-incident findings and design systemic remediation actions including preventive controls, improved detection rules, and architectural changes to prevent recurrence across environments.

Automate incident remediation

  • Implement automated remediation using Lambda functions triggered by CloudWatch alarms and EventBridge rules to perform instance recovery, service restarts, and scaling adjustments without human intervention.
  • Implement Systems Manager Automation documents for multi-step remediation workflows with approval gates, conditional branching, rate controls, and cross-account execution for fleet-wide incident response.
  • Analyze automation safety constraints and design guardrails including concurrency limits, blast radius controls, and human-in-the-loop approval gates to prevent unintended cascading remediation side effects.
  • Design enterprise incident management frameworks that integrate automated remediation, escalation procedures, blameless post-mortems, and continuous improvement feedback loops across organizational boundaries.
6 Domain 6: Security and Compliance
4 topics

Implement identity and access management for DevOps

  • Implement IAM policies with least-privilege access using identity-based policies, resource-based policies, permission boundaries, service control policies, and condition keys for pipeline and runtime access control.
  • Implement cross-account access patterns using IAM role assumption, Organizations SCPs, and IAM Identity Center permission sets for secure multi-account DevOps operations.
  • Implement pipeline security controls including CodePipeline execution roles, CodeBuild service roles, deployment role constraints, and cross-account artifact encryption for secure CI/CD execution.
  • Analyze IAM control effectiveness across pipeline, runtime, and management plane access patterns and refine permission strategies to eliminate privilege escalation and reduce blast radius of credential compromise.

Implement detection and compliance controls

  • Implement AWS Config rules (managed and custom) with conformance packs, remediation actions, and multi-account aggregation for continuous compliance monitoring of resource configurations.
  • Implement GuardDuty threat detection with finding types, suppression rules, member account integration, and EventBridge-triggered automated response workflows for security event management.
  • Implement Security Hub with standards enablement (CIS, PCI DSS, AWS Foundational), custom insights, finding aggregation, and automated remediation workflows for centralized security posture management.
  • Analyze detection control effectiveness and tune Config rules, GuardDuty suppression filters, and Security Hub finding workflows to improve fidelity and reduce false positive investigation burden.

Implement security logging and audit trails

  • Implement CloudTrail with organization trails, management and data event logging, log file validation, and S3/CloudWatch Logs delivery for API activity audit trails across all accounts.
  • Implement VPC Flow Logs, S3 access logging, and ELB access logs with centralized log aggregation, retention policies, and Athena-based query access for network and data access forensics.
  • Analyze security telemetry correlations across CloudTrail, Config, GuardDuty, and VPC Flow Logs to investigate incidents, demonstrate compliance evidence, and identify security control gaps.

Implement encryption and data protection

  • Implement KMS key management with key policies, grants, key rotation, multi-region keys, and cross-account key sharing for encryption-at-rest across S3, EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, and Secrets Manager.
  • Implement certificate management using ACM with automated renewal, DNS validation, private CA hierarchies, and TLS termination at ALB/NLB/CloudFront for encryption-in-transit enforcement.
  • Design enterprise data protection strategies that integrate encryption, key management, secret rotation, and compliance controls into delivery pipelines and runtime environments across multi-account organizations.

Hands-On Labs

25 labs ~695 min total Console Simulator

Practice in a simulated cloud console or Python code sandbox — no account needed. Each lab runs entirely in your browser.

Certification Benefits

Salary Impact

$162,000
Average Salary

Related Job Roles

DevOps Engineer Platform Engineer Site Reliability Engineer Release Engineer Infrastructure Engineer

Industry Recognition

The AWS DevOps Engineer Professional certification validates advanced CI/CD, automation, and operational expertise on AWS. It is one of the most respected professional-level cloud certifications, reflecting the critical role DevOps engineers play in modern software delivery and infrastructure reliability.

Scope

Included Topics

  • All domains and task statements in the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02) exam guide: Domain 1 SDLC Automation (22%), Domain 2 Configuration Management and IaC (17%), Domain 3 Resilient Cloud Solutions (15%), Domain 4 Monitoring and Logging (15%), Domain 5 Incident and Event Response (14%), and Domain 6 Security and Compliance (17%).
  • Professional-level DevOps architecture and operations decisions for CI/CD automation, infrastructure as code governance, resilience engineering, observability operations, incident management, and secure delivery practices on AWS.
  • Complex scenario-based tradeoff analysis involving deployment risk reduction, operational reliability, organizational controls, and compliance-aligned automation strategies.
  • Key AWS services for DevOps engineers: CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodeCommit, CodeArtifact, CloudFormation, CDK, Systems Manager, Config, CloudWatch, X-Ray, CloudTrail, EventBridge, ECS, EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, Organizations, Control Tower, Service Catalog, Elastic Beanstalk, OpsWorks, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Inspector, Macie, KMS, Secrets Manager, IAM Identity Center, Route 53, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, S3, DynamoDB, RDS, Aurora, Kinesis, SNS, SQS, Step Functions, Systems Manager Automation, Incident Manager.

Not Covered

  • Deep enterprise strategy content unrelated to DevOps operating models and automation outcomes expected by DOP-C02.
  • Provider-agnostic tooling detail that does not map to AWS native services and integration patterns used in the exam objectives.
  • Research-level software engineering optimization not connected to practical CI/CD, operations, and security controls in AWS.
  • Exact short-lived pricing terms and transient promotional details not suitable for durable technical domain specifications.

Official Exam Page

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