What the DVA-C02 actually tests
The AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification proves that you can develop, test, deploy, secure, and troubleshoot applications running in the AWS Cloud. Despite the name, this is not an exam where you spend the entire time writing code. Most questions give you an application scenario and ask you to select the best AWS service, configuration, or development approach. Success depends on understanding how AWS services fit together to solve real problems, not on memorising isolated facts.
Exam format and cost
The exam is made up of 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions delivered over 130 minutes. It costs $150 USD, although local taxes and exchange rates may adjust the final price, and you can sit it online through Pearson VUE OnVUE or at a testing centre. The passing score is 720 out of 1,000, but only 50 of the 65 questions are actually scored — the remaining 15 are unscored experimental questions that AWS does not identify during the exam. Crucially, there is no penalty for guessing, so you should never leave a question unanswered.
The four domains
Development with AWS Services makes up 32 percent of the exam and focuses on Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, the AWS SDKs, event-driven applications, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, and application caching. Security accounts for another 26 percent and covers IAM roles and policies, Cognito, temporary credentials, KMS encryption, Secrets Manager, authorization, and protecting sensitive application data. Deployment is 24 percent of the exam and expects you to be comfortable with AWS SAM, CloudFormation, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, Lambda versions and aliases, and deployment strategies such as canary, blue-green, and rolling deployments. The final 18 percent is Troubleshooting and Optimization, which tests CloudWatch logs and metrics, AWS X-Ray tracing, Lambda concurrency, performance bottlenecks, and caching strategies.
How to prepare
AWS recommends at least one year of hands-on experience along with knowledge of at least one programming language. To pass reliably, spend most of your preparation time actually building things. Deploy a small serverless application end-to-end, connect Lambda to DynamoDB behind API Gateway, assign IAM roles using least-privilege policies, store secrets securely with Secrets Manager or Parameter Store, push the whole thing through a CI/CD pipeline, and then break it on purpose so you can troubleshoot it with CloudWatch and X-Ray. That kind of practical experience is what the scenario-based questions are really testing.
The biggest mistake
The single biggest reason candidates fail is memorising service definitions without understanding how the services work together. DVA-C02 questions almost always present a realistic scenario and ask which combination of services and configurations is the most secure, scalable, resilient, and operationally efficient. If you have only memorised bullet-point definitions, you will freeze on those questions.
After you pass
Your certification remains valid for three years, after which you either recertify by taking the current version of the exam or by achieving a higher-level AWS certification.
Need help sitting the exam confidently? Our team walks you through the entire OnVUE flow — check-in, room scan, and exam environment setup — so nothing surprises you on exam day.
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