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Exam Details

• Exam Name: Big Data Certified Specialist (BDCS)
• Exam Format: Multiple choice, online with remote supervision (proctoring)
• Exam Delivery: Safe Exam Browser
• Number of Questions: 50 questions: 70% scenarios / 30% conceptual
• Exam Duration: 90 minutes
• Passing Score: 70% (35 out of 50 correct answers)
• Available Languages: Spanish / English
• Attempts: Maximum 2 attempts (minimum 15 days between attempts)
• Validity: 3 years · 15 CPD credits per year

Main Subjects

• Large-scale enterprise data architecture (20%): Architecture patterns: Lambda, Kappa and Lakehouse; Data Mesh and Data Fabric: domains, data products and self-service platform; On-premise, hybrid and multi-cloud architectures; Technology selection criteria and architecture decision records.
• Distributed processing and advanced streaming (20%): Advanced Apache Spark optimization: partitioning, shuffles and data skew; Stateful streaming, windows and exactly-once guarantees; Change data capture (CDC) and event-driven architectures; Open table formats and schema evolution.
• Platform performance, reliability and cost (15%): Data observability and service level agreements (SLO/SLA); DataOps: testing, CI/CD and pipeline deployment; High availability and disaster recovery; Platform cost management and optimization (FinOps).
• Enterprise-scale governance, security and privacy (15%): Governance operating model with DAMA-DMBOK2; Data quality with ISO/IEC 25012 and data contracts; Lineage, catalog and active metadata; Zero-trust security, fine-grained access control and encryption; Privacy by design and regulatory compliance.
• Data platforms for artificial intelligence (15%): Data for machine learning: feature stores and data versioning; MLOps at scale and data and model drift monitoring; Unstructured data, vector search and data for generative AI; Quality and governance of the data that feeds models.
• Strategy and leadership of data initiatives (15%): Data platform roadmap and operating model; Business case, prioritization and value measurement; Leading data engineering teams and managing stakeholders; Data ethics and the CertJoin Code of Ethics.

Who is this certification for?

• Data and solution architects: Who define the data platform architecture and need to prove their large-scale design judgment.
• Senior data and platform engineers: Who operate critical platforms and want to step up to architecture, performance and cost decisions.
• Data leaders: Heads of data teams who need to align the platform with business strategy.
• ML and AI architects: Who prepare the data and infrastructure feeding machine learning and generative AI models in production.
• Data and analytics consultants: Who assess and recommend data architectures for organizations across sectors.

Prerequisites

Mandatory: Big Data Certified Associate (BDCA) and Big Data Certified Expert (BDCE), both valid at the time of registration. CertJoin verifies the requirements before enabling the exam; no exam exemptions are granted.