AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02)
AWS DevOps roles now command £70k–£95k salaries, but the Professional certification separates candidates from the crowd. This Pluralsight course by Craig Arcuri drills the real-world infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, and compliance patterns you’ll face in production environments—not just exam theory.
AIU.ac Verdict: Ideal for mid-level engineers ready to prove mastery of AWS infrastructure-as-code, deployment automation, and operational excellence. The main limitation: you’ll need solid foundational AWS knowledge (Associate level or equivalent hands-on experience) to keep pace.
What This Course Covers
The course spans infrastructure automation using CloudFormation and Terraform, advanced CI/CD pipeline design with CodePipeline and CodeBuild, and deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling). You’ll also tackle monitoring and logging at scale, security hardening, cost optimisation, and incident response—the operational disciplines that separate junior from senior DevOps engineers.
Practical labs embed real scenarios: automating multi-environment deployments, implementing infrastructure drift detection, securing secrets in pipelines, and troubleshooting production failures. Craig Arcuri’s approach emphasises decision-making over memorisation, so you’ll understand *why* certain patterns matter in regulated industries and high-availability systems.
Who Is This Course For?
Ideal for:
- AWS Solutions Architects: Validate your infrastructure expertise and move into DevOps leadership or consulting roles.
- Platform Engineers: Deepen CI/CD and automation knowledge to design scalable, self-service platforms.
- Senior Systems Engineers: Transition into cloud-native DevOps with formal AWS credentialing and modern tooling.
May not suit:
- AWS beginners: Start with Associate-level certification first; this course assumes EC2, IAM, and VPC fluency.
- Non-AWS cloud engineers: Heavy AWS-specific focus; limited value if your stack is GCP or Azure.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) take?
The core course is 23 hours 28 minutes. Add 20–30 hours for hands-on labs, practice exams, and review. Most learners complete it in 4–6 weeks at 10–15 hours per week.
Do I need AWS Associate certification first?
Not officially, but you’ll struggle without Associate-level knowledge. AWS recommends 2+ years of DevOps experience and familiarity with core services (EC2, IAM, S3, RDS, VPC).
Is this course enough to pass the DOP-C02 exam?
It’s a strong foundation, but combine it with AWS whitepapers, practice exams (Tutorials Dojo or Jon Bonso), and real-world lab work. The exam tests depth and edge cases beyond course scope.
What makes Pluralsight’s version different?
Craig Arcuri is an AWS-certified expert with production DevOps experience. Pluralsight’s sandbox labs let you practise without AWS account costs, and the platform tracks your progress against exam objectives.
Course by Craig Arcuri on Pluralsight. Duration: 23h 28m. Last verified by AIU.ac: March 2026.
