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AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate 2026 - Hands On! (Udemy.com)

AWS DEA-C01 certification prep course with exercises and 2 full-length practice exams. Redshift, Glue, Athena, and more

Created by: Sundog Education by Frank Kane

Last updated September 2026

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What you will learn

  • Maximize your odds of passing the AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (DEA-C01) exam
  • Design and implement data pipelines with AWS to ingest, store, and transform data
  • Choose and design data stores, data models, data schemas, and data lifecycles.
  • Maintain, operationalize, and orchestrate data pipelines with EventBridge, Airflow, AWS Step Functions,, and more
  • Apply security, governance, and privacy best practices to your AWS data pipelines.
  • Create data lakes with S3, Glue, Redshift and more
  • Process batch and streaming data with Kinesis, EMR, containers, Lambda, and more

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Quality Score

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Overall Score : 94 / 100

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Course Description

NEW: Updated for version 1.1 of the exam (2026) and now includes an additional practice exam

The AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Exam (DEA-C01 or DE1-C01) is one of the most challenging associate-level certification exams you can take from Amazon Web Services, and even among the most challenging overall. Passing it tells employers in no uncertain terms that your knowledge of data pipelines is wide and deep. But, even experienced technologists need to prepare heavily for this exam. This course sets you up for success, by covering all of the data ingestion, transformation, and orchestration technologies on the exam and how they fit together.

Best-selling Udemy instructors Frank Kane and Stéphane Maarek have teamed up to deliver the most comprehensive and hands-on prep course we've seen. Together, they've taught over 4 million people around the world. This course combines Stéphane's depth on AWS with Frank's experience in wrangling massive data sets, gleaned during his 9-year career at Amazon itself.

The world of data engineering on AWS includes a dizzying array of technologies and services. Just a sampling of the topics we cover in-depth are:


  • Streaming and transforming data with Amazon Kinesis and Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK)

  • Queuing messages with Simple Queue Service (SQS)

  • Orchestrating data pipelines with Amazon AppFlow, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Step Functions, and Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA)

  • Transitioning from small to big data with the AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), AWS DataSync, Snow Family, Transfer Family, and more

  • Storing massive data lakes with the Simple Storage Service (S3) and managing data lifecycles

  • Optimizing transactional queries with DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Keyspaces, and MemoryDB

  • Tying your big data systems together with AWS Lambda

  • Making unstructured data query-able with AWS Glue, Glue DataBrew, and Lake Formation

  • Processing data at unlimited scale with Elastic MapReduce, including Apache Spark

  • Applying advanced machine learning algorithms at scale with Amazon SageMaker

  • Searching and analyzing petabyte-scale data with Amazon Opensearch (formerly Elasticsearch) Service

  • Querying S3 data lakes with Amazon Athena

  • Hosting massive-scale data warehouses with Redshift and Redshift Spectrum

  • Integrating smaller data with your big data, using the Relational Database Service (RDS

  • Keeping your data secure with encryption, KMS, Macie, Secrets Manager, IAM, and more

  • Managing and governing your systems with CloudFormation, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, AWS Config, and more

  • Integrating data with Generative AI applications using Bedrock, Vector Stores, Aurora, Kendra, and Knowledge Bases.

Throughout the course, you'll have lots of opportunities to reinforce your learning with hands-on demos, two full-length practice exams, and additional practice questions.  We'll also arm you with some valuable test-taking tips and strategies along the way.

Although this is an associate-level exam, it is one of the more challenging ones. AWS recommends having a few years of both data engineering experience and AWS experience before tackling it. This exam is not intended for AWS beginners.

You want to go into the AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Exam with confidence, and that's what this course delivers. Hit the enroll button, and we're excited to see you in the course... and ultimately to see you get your certification!

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Instructor

My name is Stéphane Maarek, I am passionate about Cloud Computing, and I will be your instructor in this course. I teach about AWS certifications, focusing on helping my students improve their professional proficiencies in AWS.

I have already taught 3,000,000+ students and gotten 500,000+ reviews throughout my career in designing and delivering these certifications and courses!

With AWS becoming the centerpiece of today's modern IT architectures, I have decided it is time for students to learn how to be an AWS Data Analytics Professional. So, let’s kick start the course! You are in good hands!

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Instructor

Hey, I'm Frank Kane, and I'm also co-instructing this course. I spent nine years working for Amazon from the inside as a senior engineer and senior manager, and I'm best known for my top-selling courses in "big data", data analytics, machine learning, AI, Apache Spark, system design, and Elasticsearch.

I've been teaching on Udemy since 2015, where I've reached over one million students all around the world!

I've worked hard to keep this course up to date with the latest developments in AWS data engineering, and to make sure you're prepared for the latest version of this exam. Let's dive in and get you ready!

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This course also comes with:

  • Lifetime access to all future updates

  • A responsive instructor in the Q&A Section

  • Udemy Certificate of Completion Ready for Download

  • A 30 Day "No Questions Asked" Money Back Guarantee!

Join us in this course if you want to pass the AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate Exam DEA-C01 and master the AWS platform!

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Instructor Details

Sundog Education by Frank Kane

Sundog Education's mission is to make highly valuable career skills in data engineering, data science, generative AI, AWS, and machine learning accessible to everyone in the world. Our consortium of expert instructors shares our knowledge in these emerging fields with you, at prices anyone can afford. 

As a senior manager at Amazon during its early years, Frank Kane led large technical teams, managed multi-year projects, and served as a "bar-raiser" - interviewing thousands and hiring hundreds across the company.

Frank holds 26 issued patents in machine learning and personalization. After 9 years at Amazon and IMDb, he founded Sundog Education and has since taught over 1.1 million people in AI, ML, AWS, system design, and tech leadership. Frank has been teaching full-time for over 10 years - but is always building projects on the side with the latest emerging technologies, to better explain them to you!

Our teaching style is to simplify complex concepts - once you cut through all the notation and jargon, most of AI and machine learning is pretty easy to understand. We make these advanced topics accessible to anyone with a modest technical background, always using plain English and examples to drive it home. We make learning easy, hands-on, and fun.

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Reviews

4.7

13,819 ratings on Udemy

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By Eugenio Cano Serrano on 8/1/2026

It was very helpfull to prepare myself for the certification (which by the way I passed), but I consider that there are some extra information that is not in the course that should be covered. I learnt extra stuff in the separated mock exams that are anounced at the end of the course. I paid for those and use them for extra practices. Without them I wouldn't have passed my exam. I strongly suggest everybody to purchase those extra resources.

By Taylor H on 7/29/2026

Excellent teaching with simple explanations. I really appreciate the number of interactive labs that are included, and I have learned a lot about new features, even for services like S3 that I use everyday.

By Bipasha Mondal on 7/12/2026

I just passed my AWS DEA-C01 exam today. I followed this course as a starting point. The actual exam is much more advanced and difficult. For a candidate with no hands-on experience on AWS, it would be very difficult to crack on the first go. Though the course covers basics of almost all the services, only 20-30% of the questions in the actual exam can be answered with this knowledge. Consider reading the AWS official documentation and blogs to strengthen your foundation. Even the practice tests are very easy as compared to the actual exam. My request to the instructors would be to increase the difficulty of the practice tests.

By Ryan Renebome on 5/26/2026

Frank and Stephane do such an amazing job of explaining the topics covered in this course. I would highly recommend this course to anyone interested in obtaining the AWS Data Engineer Associate certification. Thank you both.

By Caio Araujo on 5/19/2026

O aprofundamento do curso é ótimo, porém tem muitos erros nas legendas em português (table traduzido como mesa, timestamp traduzido como carimbo de tempo etc).

By Gabriele Sanelli on 5/4/2026

I passed the certification a few days ago, and I only took this course. It covers all the topics mentioned in the official guide. Thanks, Frank. Thanks, Stephane.

By Matthew Vincent Pickles on 5/3/2026

I'm happy to say that I passed that I passed the AWS Data Engineer Associate (DEA_C01) certfication yesterday at the first attempt! This course was one of the main resources I used and gives quite a well focused approach to learning the services you need to know about to answer the questions in the exam. Thanks to Frank and Stephane! (Also, worth mentioning that this is the 3rd AWS certification that I have passed using one of Staphane's courses)

By Michael Peters on 2/16/2026

For all that has to be covered/known for this exam, Frank and Stephane do an excellent job touching all of the topic areas. Don't expect this course alone to be enough to pass. You do need to have working knowledge of multiple areas already. I passed the exam but it definitely felt harder than any other associate level exam I've taken...more like a difficulty halfway between associate and professional. Had questions diving into detailed understanding (DQDL syntax, RDS encryption, lots of questions about least operational overhead for a solution, etc.). I was grateful for the extra time on this exam (140 min vs. 90 min on other associate exams) and had more questions flagged for review than any other exam to date (including pro level exams).

By Ashok Khobare on 1/31/2026

What I liked most is that the course is not just exam‑oriented, but practically aligned with real‑world data engineering scenarios. Even with my experience, the explanations around data ingestion patterns, Glue vs EMR vs Lambda trade‑offs, Redshift internals, streaming architectures, orchestration, and security/governance (Lake Formation, IAM, KMS) helped reinforce best practices and fill small but important knowledge gaps. The instructors do a great job explaining why a particular AWS service should be chosen instead of simply explaining features. This is exactly how AWS frames questions in the exam and how real production decisions are made. The coverage of cost optimization, monitoring, and operational aspects is especially valuable for enterprise and BFSI environments. The course content is up‑to‑date, clearly mapped to the DEA‑C01 exam blueprint, and supported with hands‑on demos and realistic scenarios. It works well both as: A primary learning resource for less experienced engineers, and A solid revision and confidence‑building resource for experienced professionals like me. Overall, this course significantly improved my confidence for the AWS Data Engineer Associate exam and strengthened my understanding of AWS data architecture decisions. I would highly recommend it to anyone serious about data engineering on AWS, regardless of experience level

By shah Mustafa on 1/30/2026

Very clearly explained. I had difficulty in understanding the concept of structured and unstructured data. I watched a lot of other youtube videos but my concept was not clear. But here the instructor explained it very clearly and concisely. Perfect!

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