Free
- Untimed practice across all seven domains
- Every question explained against the objective it tests
- Domains by name and official weight
Databricks · Data Engineer Associate
Delta Live Tables isn't on this exam any more. The thing it turned into is.
Databricks rewrote the exam on 4 May 2026. The old five-domain outline became seven, with updated coverage of Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines, Lakeflow Jobs and Declarative Automation Bundles. If you studied the previous version, much of the technology will feel familiar, but the terminology and emphasis have changed.
The exam has 45 scored questions across 90 minutes. Databricks does not publish a current pass mark.
- Built from the seven-domain exam guide introduced on 4 May 2026
- Mocks follow all seven official weightings, from 6% platform fundamentals to 22% data transformation
- Every question is mapped to the domain and exam objective it tests
Free practice across all seven domains. No card required.
Data Engineer AssociateData Ingestion and LoadingMedium
A partner drops JSON files into a cloud storage location on no fixed schedule. Some days it is 50 files; some days it is 50,000. The partner adds fields to the JSON without warning. The pipeline must process only files it has not already processed, and it must not fail when an unexpected field appears. Which ingestion approach meets both requirements?
Select one.
One choice only. Your earliest pick was dropped.
Where this question sits in the exam
Data Ingestion and Loading is 21% of the Data Engineer Associate exam. Our mocks use the same mix.
0 of 1 selected
An original item written against the Databricks exam guide, last checked 18 September 2026. Not a real exam question.
How it's scored
The pass mark isn't just unpublished. It moves.
Databricks sets passing scores statistically and revises them as questions change. That's their stated reason for not printing one — so the figure you've seen quoted didn't come from them.
A readiness read still needs a line, so we use 80% weighted accuracy. It's ours, not theirs, and we set it high on purpose. Being too strict costs you a week of practice. Being too lenient costs you USD 200.
Data Engineer Associate45 questions · 90 min
Accuracy by domain, weighted as the exam weights them · assumed 80% — ours, not Databricks'
Intelligence Platform6%82%
Ingestion and Loading21%74%
Transformation and Modeling22%71%
Lakeflow Jobs16%68%
CI/CD10%77%
Troubleshooting10%Furthest behind54%
Governance and Security15%61%
Troubleshooting is your lowest score. Governance and Security is the bigger drag — a smaller gap, but on 15% of the form instead of 10%. That's where the next hour goes.
The exam you recertify into isn't the exam you passed
The credential lasts two years. To recertify you take whatever version is live then, and on a platform shipping this fast the guide will have moved.
There is also a renewal exam for this credential: 25 scored questions in 60 minutes, online only, USD 200, and it requires that you currently hold the certification. The general FAQ and the exam guide still say recertification is the full live exam; the exam-specific renewal page is newer and more specific, so it governs here.
What the questions look like
One answer, four options, and a constraint doing all the work
Scenario-first
Almost every item opens with a situation and a list of explicit requirements, then asks which approach meets them. The requirements are the whole question: strip them out and two or three options become equally correct.
Code you have to read
Items carry SQL and PySpark snippets and ask you to pick the one that behaves correctly, not the one that looks familiar. Databricks states the rule directly: data manipulation code appears in SQL where SQL can express it, and in Python everywhere else. Scala isn't required.
Names that changed recently
The current guide names Lakeflow Jobs, Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines, Git Folders and Declarative Automation Bundles — each with its former name in parentheses, which is the guide telling you which one it expects to see chosen.
The loop
Practice, sit, review, repeat
Step 1 is free. Steps 2 to 4 need a subscription.
certs.acedify.com/data-engineer-associate
Practice · untimed
MediumA partner drops JSON files into a cloud storage location on no fixed schedule. Some days it is 50 files; some days it is 50,000. The partner adds fields to the JSON without warning. The pipeline must process only files it has not already processed, and it must not fail when an unexpected field appears.
Which ingestion approach meets both requirements?
COPY INTO on an hourly schedule, with COPY_OPTIONS ('mergeSchema' = 'true')
Auto Loader with cloudFiles.schemaLocation set and cloudFiles.schemaEvolutionMode set to rescue
A batch read of the directory with spark.read.json(), written with mode("overwrite")
A Lakeflow Connect managed connector pointed at the storage location
Auto Loader tracks which files it has seen in the checkpoint at schemaLocation, so already-processed files are skipped. In rescue mode an unexpected field lands in _rescued_data rather than stopping the stream. COPY INTO is genuinely incremental, but at 50,000 files in a run it is the wrong tool. Domain: Data Ingestion and Loading.
Click a step to see it.
What you get back
No official line. So we show you ours.
Your readiness is a range, because it's an inference from the questions you've answered rather than a result you've earned. For a certification the outcome is binary, so the question is whether the whole range sits above the line.
The difference here is whose line it is. AWS publishes 720 and we measure you against their number. Databricks publishes nothing, so we measure you against ours — 80% weighted accuracy, set high on purpose, drawn dashed and labelled everywhere it appears.
Not the domain you scored lowest in — the domain where low accuracy costs you most, which is a different question when one domain is 6% of the form and another is 22%.
When the range stops narrowing and stops rising, more drilling isn't buying you anything, and that's worth knowing before you book.
If the real pass mark is below ours, the worst case is that you sat more practice than you needed. We'd rather make that mistake than the other one.
Data Engineer Associate · 4 mocks completed
Where you stand
Borderline
70–90
assumed 80% — ours, not Databricks'
Your range crosses our assumed line. On today's evidence it's a coin flip, and we'll say so.
Three states
Try the three states. We won't show you a percentage chance of passing — nobody can calculate one honestly without years of real outcomes to calibrate against.
What we don't do
We won't show you a percentage chance of passing. Nobody can calculate one honestly without years of real outcomes behind it.
What it actually tests
Seven domains, and the top two are 43% of the exam
Practising in proportion matters more here than on most exams, because the spread is wide. A bank that drifts toward platform concepts spends your time on 6% of the form.
| Domain | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Databricks Intelligence Platform | 6% | The smallest domain. Platform architecture, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and picking the right compute for a workload. |
| Data Ingestion and Loading | 21% | Auto Loader, COPY INTO, Lakeflow Connect standard and managed connectors, JDBC/ODBC, and choosing between them under a stated constraint. |
| Data Transformation and Modeling | 22% | The biggest block. Cleaning bronze into silver with PySpark and SQL, joins, dedup, aggregations, shuffle-partition tuning, and gold-layer materialized views and streaming tables. |
| Working with Lakeflow Jobs | 16% | Task graphs and dependencies, retries and conditional branching, and choosing between time-based and data-driven triggers. |
| Implementing CI/CD | 10% | Git Folders, Declarative Automation Bundles across dev/test/prod, and the Databricks CLI. |
| Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Optimization | 10% | Reading the Spark UI for skew, shuffle and spill; Liquid Clustering; predictive optimization; cluster startup failures. |
| Governance and Security | 15% | Unity Catalog: managed versus external tables, GRANT/REVOKE/DENY, row filters and column masks, ABAC policies. |
Databricks publishes these as exact figures. Last checked against the exam guide on 18 September 2026.
Transformation plus Ingestion is 43% of the form. If you have a limited week, that is where it goes.
Exam facts
Null fields are omitted. We do not print TBA.
- Credential
- Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate
- Level
- Associate
- Current version
- Live since 4 May 2026
- Length
- 90 minutes
- Scored questions
- 45
- Unscored questions
- Present, count not published
- Question types
- Multiple choice
- Pass mark
- Not published
- Domains
- 7
- Fee
- USD 200 + local tax
- Delivery
- Online or test centre, proctored
- Test aids
- None
- Languages
- English, 日本語, Português BR, 한국어
- Prerequisite
- None
- Recommended experience
- Six months hands-on with Databricks
- Validity
- 2 years
- Retake wait
- 14 days between attempts, unlimited attempts, full fee each
- Recertification
- Full current exam, or the 25-question renewal exam
Pricing
Practice free. Pay when you want to know where you stand.
Pro
- Timed mocks at 45 questions in 90 minutes
- Weighted accuracy across every mock you've sat
- Your readiness range, and how it moves
Everything on every exam, one subscription
One subscription covers the Databricks certifications, AWS, the Microsoft certifications, the Salesforce certifications, the Claude certifications, TOEFL, IELTS and the SAT.
The exam fee is separate and goes to Databricks. We're prep, not registration.
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Data Engineer Associate questions
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