The Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate certification proves that candidates are proficient in integrating, consolidating, and transforming data from various data systems that are structured and unstructured and are able to build analytics solutions. They also possess skills to store and enhance datasets to provide analysis by applying various Azure data services and are capable to implement languages. Such professionals are also competent in using data pipelines and data stores, and are able to meet the data pipeline needs as well as minimize data loss. In addition, the knowledge of some data processing languages will be beneficial. The process of getting this certification includes passing the DP-203 exam.
Exam DP-203 is named as Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure. The exam contains 4 sections in which you should have solid skills. The first part is centered on the design and implementation of data storage. That’s why you should be able to deal with the structure of a data storage, a partition strategy, and the serving layer. Your skills to apply them will also be tested in this part.
The second topic is focused on developing and designing data processing. Within this topic, you should be competent in cleansing data, splitting it, transforming data by utilizing Data Factory, Transact-SQL, Stream Analytics, encoding and decoding data, as well as performing data exploratory analysis. Then, you should demonstrate your skills in developing a batch processing solution, a stream processing solution, and operating pipelines and batches.
In the third topic, your proficiency in implementing data security will be assessed. So, you are expected to protect data policy and standards, and well as apply data security. The evaluated skills here involve creating a data auditing strategy, data retention policy, implementing Azure RBAC and ACL for Data Lake Storage Gen2, using column-level and row-level security, as well as utilizing data masking, a data auditing strategy, and resource token, operating sensitive information.
The fourth section covers the data storage and data processing topic. You must be able to monitor data storage and data processing, which means that you are experienced at using Azure Monitor for logging, understanding its options, monitoring query and cluster performance, and scheduling pipeline tests. In addition, you should be good at troubleshooting data processing and data storage. This implies that you are able to work with small files and compact them, deal with data spill and shuffling in a pipeline, tune queries with the help of cache and indexers, and troubleshoot a pipeline run or a spark job when it is failed.
Since the DP-203 exam is of the professional levels will include about 40-60 questions of different types. You will be given 120 minutes if the exam contains labs or 100 minutes, if they are not included. The exam will cost you $165 which you are to pay before taking it. And also, before enrolling in the certification process, it is recommended to opt for the official practice test offered on the vendor’s website.
As it is stated on the Ziprecruiter website, the certified Azure Data Engineer professionals earn annually about $138,866 per year.