Databricks Data Engineer Professional
Databricks Data Engineer Professional
Everything you need for the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional exam: format, the ten sections, a study plan and free sample questions.
- Questions
- 59 scored
- Duration
- 120 min
- Fee
- $200
- Validity
- 2 years
The Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional exam assesses your ability to perform advanced data engineering tasks on the platform. Where the Associate asks whether you can build a pipeline, this asks whether you can write the code, tune it for cost and performance, secure it, and debug it when it fails at scale.
There are no prerequisites and the Associate is not required. Databricks recommends hands-on experience with the tasks in the exam guide.
What the exam covers
| Section | Weight |
|---|---|
| Developing Code for Data Processing using Python and SQL | 22% |
| Cost & Performance Optimisation | 13% |
| Data Transformation, Cleansing, and Quality | 10% |
| Monitoring and Alerting | 10% |
| Ensuring Data Security and Compliance | 10% |
| Debugging and Deploying | 10% |
| Data Ingestion & Acquisition | 7% |
| Data Governance | 7% |
| Data Modelling | 6% |
| Data Sharing and Federation | 5% |
Ten sections, which is the most granular structure of any exam covered here. Only one exceeds 13%, and five are 7% or less.
Two things follow. First, writing code is the centre of the exam — at 22%, Developing Code for Data Processing using Python and SQL is more than a fifth of it and has no counterpart on the Associate. Second, nothing else is large enough to carry you, so breadth is mandatory and blind spots are expensive.
Note what grew relative to the Associate: cost and performance optimisation appears at 13% where the Associate bundles it into a 10% troubleshooting section. Ingestion shrinks from 21% to 7% — the Professional assumes you can already load data.
Format at a glance
59 scored questions in 120 minutes, multiple choice, online or at a test centre. The fee is $200 and the credential is valid for two years.
Offered in English, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil) and Korean.
Where to start
Read the exam format, then how it differs from the Associate if you hold that credential. The study plan groups the ten sections into manageable blocks.
Databricks Data Engineer Professional guides
- Databricks Data Engineer Professional formatThe Databricks Data Engineer Professional format: 59 scored questions, 120 minutes, $200, two-year validity and all ten section weights.
- Databricks Data Engineer: Professional vs AssociateHow the Databricks Data Engineer Professional differs from the Associate: code, optimisation and ten sections instead of seven.
- Databricks Data Engineer Professional study planA six-week study plan for the Databricks Data Engineer Professional exam, grouping its ten sections into manageable blocks by weight.
- Free Databricks Data Engineer Professional questionsFive free Databricks Data Engineer Professional practice questions across the ten sections, each with an explained answer.
- Databricks DE Professional: developing codeThe largest Data Engineer Professional section explained: PySpark and SQL, lazy evaluation, join strategies, UDFs and writing efficient transformations.
- Databricks DE Professional: cost and performanceThe Data Engineer Professional optimisation section explained: reading the Spark UI, skew, small files, partitioning, caching and cluster cost.
- Databricks DE Professional: ingestion, quality, modellingThree Data Engineer Professional sections explained: advanced ingestion, data cleansing and quality, and dimensional modelling on the lakehouse.
- Databricks DE Professional: monitoring and deployingTwo Data Engineer Professional sections explained: monitoring and alerting on pipelines, plus debugging failures and deploying safely.
- Databricks DE Professional: security and governanceThree Data Engineer Professional sections explained: security and compliance, Unity Catalog governance, and Delta Sharing and federation.
- Is the Databricks DE Professional worth it?Is the Databricks Data Engineer Professional certification worth taking? Who benefits, what it costs, and when the Associate is enough.