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How to Prepare for the Databricks Data Engineer Professional Exam (2026)

The Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional exam changed on 9 October 2026, and good free practice material is hard to find. This post covers what the exam looks like now, how I'd prepare for it, and links to 8 free interactive practice exams with explanations.

The exam at a glance

Questions60 scored, multiple choice (some "choose 2")
Time120 minutes (about 2 minutes per question)
LanguageEnglish
Pass markNot published by Databricks. Aim for 70%+ on practice exams.

Always check the official exam page and exam guide for the latest details, fees and booking.

What's on it, and how much it counts

SectionWeight
Developing code for data processing (Python & SQL)23%
Cost & performance optimization15%
Data ingestion & acquisition12%
Data transformation, cleansing & quality12%
Monitoring & alerting10%
Debugging & deploying10%
Security & compliance8%
Data governance5%
Data modeling5%

Development and performance together are almost 40% of the exam. Spend your time there first.

How to prepare

  1. Read the official exam guide end to end. Turn every bullet into a checklist item and tick it off only when you can explain it without notes.
  2. Get hands-on. A free Databricks workspace is enough. Build a small bronze-silver-gold pipeline with Auto Loader, Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines (SDP) with expectations, and a job with a few tasks. Reading alone won't cover the "what happens if…" questions.
  3. Learn the syntax, not just the concepts. Many questions show code with a blank to fill in or ask what a snippet does. Know the exact keywords.
  4. Take a practice exam early, before you feel ready. Your weakest sections tell you where to study.
  5. Review every miss. Read the explanation, then check the docs page for that feature. Keep a short list of topics you keep getting wrong and revisit it before the exam.
  6. Do at least one full timed run in exam mode, so 120 minutes feels normal on the day.

Topics worth extra attention

  • Streaming: checkpoints, triggers (availableNow), output modes, watermarks, and streaming tables vs materialized views.
  • Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines: expectations (warn / drop / fail), quarantine patterns, AUTO CDC and SCD Type 1 vs 2, and the event log.
  • Performance: Liquid Clustering, CLUSTER BY AUTO, Predictive Optimization, deletion vectors, file pruning, data skipping, skew and spill in the Spark UI.
  • Unity Catalog security: privileges (USE CATALOG, USE SCHEMA, BROWSE, MODIFY), row filters, column masks and the new ABAC policies with governed tags.
  • Sharing & ingestion: OpenSharing (formerly Delta Sharing), Lakehouse Federation, Clean Rooms, Lakeflow Connect and Iceberg tables.
  • Newer SQL features: VARIANT, ai_query, Unity Catalog Python UDFs and metric views.
  • Deployment: Databricks Asset Bundles (targets, run_as, CI/CD), job repair runs, serverless job settings and system tables for monitoring and cost.

Exam-day tips

  • Watch for NOT, EXCEPT and "choose 2" in the question.
  • If a question takes more than 3 minutes, pick your best guess, flag it, and move on.
  • Rule out clearly wrong options first. Usually two can go straight away.
  • Prefer the option that is simplest, managed and governed by Unity Catalog. That's very often what Databricks considers the best practice.
  • Leave 10 minutes at the end for flagged questions. There's no penalty for guessing, so answer everything.

Free practice exams

Each exam has about 60 original questions with explanations. Use practice mode for instant feedback, or exam mode with a 120-minute timer. Your progress is saved in your browser.

Practice Exam 159 questions Practice Exam 259 questions Practice Exam 359 questions Practice Exam 459 questions Practice Exam 559 questions Practice Exam 659 questions Practice Exam 759 questions Practice Exam 860 questions · newest topics

Start with Practice Exam 8 if you want to focus on the topics added in October 2026.

Disclaimer: These practice exams are free and unofficial. The questions are original and written for study. They are not real exam questions, and this blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Databricks. Databricks features change often, so check the official documentation when in doubt.

Good luck! If you found this useful, share it with someone else preparing, and leave a comment with anything you'd like covered.

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