In late September 2020, I passed the certification which was known as “Magento Certified Cloud Developer” before. Its full name is now “Adobe Certified Expert – Magento Commerce Cloud Developer”. I took the exam remotely from home – you can read more about the procedure in my separate blog post about remote exams.

The exam is about the management of Magento Commerce Cloud projects.

What is the target group of the “Magento Commerce Cloud Developer” exam?

The certification is relevant to all people who are working with Magento Cloud projects on a technical basis, mainly developers and administrators. Mastering the content of the certification really pays off if you are setting up and managing such a project, and having passed the exam successfully will demonstrates that you know how to work on such a project.

What are the contents of the exam?

The main contents of the cloud developer exam can be sorted into the following areas:

• Architecture
• Git branches and environments
• Configuring deployment, especially Static Content Deployment (SCD)
• Configuration files and which setting goes where
• Variables
• Troubleshooting and maintenance

It’s important to know the differences between the Starter and the Pro version of the Magento Commerce Cloud in detail, as well as the technical differences between the different environments (production, staging, integration, …).

A fair amount of detail knowledge is needed if you want to pass the exam. This includes knowing where to find which log file, which variable can be set in which file, and in which case you need to contact the Cloud support team.

How much experience with the Magento Commerce Cloud do I need?

Ideally, you should have already set up and administered a Magento Commerce Cloud project, but that’s not absolutely needed. Personally, I was a developer on one Cloud project, but without too much insight into its administration, and I still passed the exam – but I needed to study more to compensate for the lack of experience. Theoretically, it could be possible to pass the exam without any actual experience, but I wouldn’t recommend that – it would need a lot of preparation.

What is the best way to prepare for the exam?

I have used the following different resources to study for the Commerce Cloud certification exam:

1. Magento DevDocs

An extensive documentation about the Commerce Cloud is available for free at https://devdocs.magento.com/cloud/bk-cloud.html. It gives a good overview and lots of details.

2. SwiftOtter

The US-based Magento agency SwiftOtter offers study guides and practice tests about (nearly?) all Magento certifications. You can find the Cloud developer materials at https://swiftotter.com/certifications/magento-2-cloud-developer-study-guide. As it’s a commercial product, you need to pay for it, but it’s absolutely worth the expense.

The study guide is a welcome addition to the Magento DevDocs and sheds some more light on the areas which are most relevant for the exam. As it has more than 100 pages, you’ll need some time to read it all.

The pratice test helps to get a feeling for the type of questions you will face in the real exam, and its result will give you an indication of how well prepared you are. Don’t take it too seriously though: I didn’t perform too well in my two tries with the practice test and still passed the real exam.

3. On-Demand Training in the Adobe Solution Partners Portal (SPP)

This option is available to official Adobe partner companies only, but it’s the single resource which helped me the most. There is an online course at the SPP (need to log in first) which covers the Cloud Developer topics quite well. Basically, it’s a number of slides with some excercise questions in between.

See a sample slide here:

Please note that this course is for free if you are working for a Adobe Solution Partner. For me, this course was the most valuable resource I used for studying.

Conclusion

The “Magento Commerce Cloud Developer” certification is one of the newest certifications available, and it fits quite well into the list. It’s not the easiest, but also not the hardest (i.e. the “Magento Professional Developer” / “Magento Commerce Developer” (Expert level) is more challenging), and the questions are of good quality. There are also good training resources available to help you prepare for the exam, so you can still pass the exam even if you don’t have a lot of real-life experience with Magento Commerce Cloud yet.