Certified Cloud Platform Engineer – AWS Associate

Certified Cloud Platform Engineer – AWS Associate

Domain 1: Infrastructure Deployment & Provisioning (30%)

This domain evaluates the candidate's ability to build and configure cloud environments based on pre-existing architectural specifications, with a strong emphasis on automation and infrastructure as code.

• 1.1 Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Practical application of AWS CloudFormation or agnostic tools like Terraform to deploy and manage resource templates.
• 1.2 Configure networking and basic connectivity: Hands-on implementation of VPCs, public/private subnets, route tables, Internet Gateways, and NAT Gateways.
• 1.3 Deploy compute workloads: Launching and configuring EC2 instances, deploying containerized applications on ECS/EKS, and provisioning AWS Lambda functions.

Domain 2: Operations & Lifecycle Management (25%)

Focuses on the daily administration of the cloud platform, ensuring that resources run predictably, are properly backed up, and remain up to date.

• 2.1 Manage data lifecycle and storage operations: Configuring retention policies in S3, managing EBS volumes, and executing snapshot lifecycles.
• 2.2 Automate routine operational tasks: Utilizing AWS Systems Manager (Run Command, Patch Manager) and EventBridge to schedule and automate system maintenance.
• 2.3 Execute backup and recovery procedures: Implementing centralized backup plans using AWS Backup and validating database restorations (RDS, DynamoDB).

Domain 3: Security, Identity & Compliance Implementation (25%)

Measures the technical proficiency to implement the security controls designed by architects, ensuring workloads are protected from day one.

• 3.1 Enforce the principle of least privilege: Creating, assigning, and auditing IAM policies, service roles, and user groups.
• 3.2 Configure perimeter and internal security controls: Strict implementation of Security Groups, Network ACLs, and basic AWS WAF configuration.
• 3.3 Manage traceability and audit logging: Enabling and configuring AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and securing log files against unauthorized modification.

Domain 4: Monitoring, Troubleshooting & Optimization (20%)

Evaluates the capability to maintain system health, diagnose tier-1 and tier-2 operational failures, and apply efficiency adjustments.

• 4.1 Configure observability and alerting: Creating dashboards, custom metrics, and Amazon CloudWatch alarms to proactively detect anomalies.
• 4.2 Diagnose common network and access issues: Troubleshooting connectivity errors (e.g., using VPC Reachability Analyzer), IAM permission conflicts (Access Analyzer), and load balancer health check failures.
• 4.3 Apply technical optimization recommendations: Executing tactical adjustments based on AWS Trusted Advisor findings, such as right-sizing instances or terminating orphaned resources.