☁️ Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate - Exam-Prep

For aspiring data engineers and analysts: master the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Delta Lake, Lakeflow, and Unity Catalog to confidently pass the Associate certification. The course is organized into 8 modules, ending with a final exam (pass mark 70%). It is independent, free exam-preparation training — not an official or accredited review course.

What you'll learn

• The Data Intelligence Platform & Lakehouse Architecture
• Data Ingestion: Auto Loader, COPY INTO & Streaming
• Delta Lake: Tables, Transactions & Optimization
• Data Transformation & Modeling with Spark SQL / PySpark
• Working with Lakeflow Jobs & Declarative Pipelines
• Implementing CI/CD: Repos, Databricks CLI & Asset Bundles
• Troubleshooting, Monitoring & Performance Optimization
• Governance & Security with Unity Catalog

Learning objectives

• Explain the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform architecture, the lakehouse paradigm, and core compute services with their cost models.
• Ingest batch and streaming data using Auto Loader, COPY INTO, and handle schema evolution.
• Build and optimize Delta Lake tables, manage transactions, time travel, and run OPTIMIZE, Z-ORDER, and VACUUM.
• Transform and model data with Spark SQL and PySpark, applying medallion (bronze/silver/gold) design.
• Orchestrate, schedule, and monitor multi-task pipelines with Lakeflow Jobs and Declarative Pipelines.
• Implement CI/CD using Databricks Repos Git integration, the Databricks CLI, and Asset Bundles across dev/test/prod.
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks (data skew, shuffle, spill) using the Spark UI and job run history.
• Apply governance and security with Unity Catalog: catalogs, schemas, permissions, and data lineage.