AWS Certified Developer - Associate · Replaces DVA-C02
DVA-C03
AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C03) validates the ability to develop, deploy, test and troubleshoot applications on AWS. DVA-C03 replaces DVA-C02 from 1 December 2026. The domain structure carries over, with Deployment widening to Testing and Deployment and the weights moving to 30/26/22/22. The substantive addition is a new task on securing AI service integrations — access control, data privacy, input and output filtering, agent tool authorization — along with AI-assisted development tooling across the development, testing, deployment and troubleshooting tasks.
65
130 min
720/ 1000
635+
Target Audience
Developers with one or more years of hands-on experience building and maintaining applications on AWS, who write code against AWS APIs and SDKs and own the deployment and troubleshooting of what they ship.
Prerequisites
No required certification. AWS recommends one or more years of hands-on development experience on AWS, proficiency in at least one high-level programming language, and familiarity with application lifecycle management and CI/CD tooling.
Question Types
Language & Recognition
Official Exam Languages
PasslyExam Languages
Recognition Scope
Recognized worldwide. The exam is delivered in English, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese and Spanish (Latin America).
Exam Domains
Development with AWS Services
Security
Testing and Deployment
Troubleshooting and Optimization
Recommended Study Plan
- Week 1: Your C02 study still counts. All four domains keep their titles and only the weights move, from 32/26/24/18 to 30/26/22/22. Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, IAM and CloudWatch/X-Ray remain central. What changed is that "Deployment" widened to "Testing and Deployment".
- Week 2: Close the new AI security task (2.3) — the only wholly new area on the exam. Learn the six Bedrock Guardrails policy types (prompt injection protection is the Prompt Attack category inside content filters, not a policy of its own), the difference between BLOCK and ANONYMIZE in sensitive information filters, PrivateLink interface endpoints, model invocation logging, and AgentCore session isolation and tool-use authorization.
- Week 3: Reinforce AI tooling and containers. Skills for using AI tools in development, test generation, CI/CD and error analysis were added across tasks 1.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1 and 4.3, and container image management (ECR tag immutability, lifecycle policies) and containerized deployment (ECS task definitions, EKS manifests, Fargate) became explicit skills. Presigned URLs are new too.
- Final 7 days: Run timed mocks to build speed. The standard is 720 on a 100–1,000 scale with compensatory scoring, so there is no per-domain cut score. 15 of the 65 questions are unscored and are not identified, so moving on beats sinking time into one you do not know.
Question Validation Process
Try the practice set directly and judge real-exam similarity yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How is DVA-C03 different from DVA-C02?
A. It is an incremental revision, not a rebuild. All four domains keep their titles and the weights move from 32/26/24/18 to 30/26/22/22, with Deployment widening to Testing and Deployment. The substantive addition is Task 2.3 on securing AI service integrations, plus AI-tooling skills threaded through development, testing, CI/CD and troubleshooting. Presigned URLs, container image management and containerized deployment also became explicit skills. It is still 65 questions with a passing score of 720.
Q. Is my C02 study wasted?
A. No — and unlike the SAP-C02 to SAP-C03 revision, almost nothing is invalidated. Some skills were consolidated (encryption and sensitive data into one task, four DynamoDB skills into one), but AWS states explicitly that consolidation does not reduce their emphasis. You add the AI security area on top of what you already know.
Q. Do the AI questions require knowing models or prompts?
A. No. The exam guide lists selecting foundation models, prompt engineering and designing RAG architectures as out-of-scope job tasks. What is tested is how you secure the integration: access, data privacy, input and output filtering, agent tool-use authorization and log protection. The only in-scope AI services are Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon Quick and Kiro.
Q. What score is considered stable?
A. A practical benchmark is 75–80%+ across your latest 3 mocks. The standard is 720 on a 100–1,000 scale with compensatory scoring, so there is no per-domain cut score. If only the new AI area lags, closing that first moves the total fastest.
Q. How do practice questions and the timed mock exam differ?
A. Practice questions are solved by topic with answer explanations to shore up weak areas; the timed mock exam is taken like the real thing. Both use original questions with AI tutor explanations.
Q. Is this similar to exam dumps?
A. PasslyExam does not provide leaked dumps. Our content is built from official guides and public exam objectives, then tuned to reflect realistic question patterns and difficulty distribution. The focus is practical readiness with explanation-based learning, not memorization of leaked items.