Browse Exams — Mock Exams & Practice Tests

DE-PRO Study Plan (30 / 60 / 90 Days)

A practical DE-PRO study plan you can follow: 30-day intensive, 60-day balanced, and 90-day part-time schedules with weekly focus, suggested hours/week, and practice-first tips for production pipeline questions.

On this page

This page answers the question most candidates actually have: “How do I structure my DE‑PRO prep?”
DE‑PRO rewards production instincts: correctness, recoverability, and performance trade-offs under constraints.

Use the plan that matches your available time, then follow the loop: Syllabus → drills → review misses → mixed sets → timed runs.

How long should you study?

Your starting point Typical total study time Best-fit timeline
You run production Spark/Delta pipelines already 35–60 hours 30–60 days
You know Spark but are newer to streaming/DLT ops 60–90 hours 60–90 days
You’re new to production pipeline ownership 90–130+ hours 90 days

Choose a plan based on hours per week:

Time you can commit Recommended plan
10–12 hrs/week 30‑day intensive
6–8 hrs/week 60‑day balanced
3–5 hrs/week 90‑day part‑time

30-Day Intensive Plan

Target pace: ~10–12 hours/week.
Goal: learn the blueprint quickly, then rely on mixed sets to harden judgment.

Week Focus What to do Links
1 Incremental batch pipelines CDC/upserts, idempotency, backfills, multi-hop architecture. Do daily drills and start a miss log. Syllabus • Cheatsheet
2 Structured Streaming Triggers, watermarks, late data, state, checkpointing. Practice “what happens when X fails?” scenarios. Cheatsheet • Practice
3 DLT + data quality DLT pipeline structure, expectations, reliability and observability. Do 2 mixed sets this week. Syllabus • Practice
4 Performance + reliability review Shuffle/skew, file layout, caching, cluster sizing, and recovery playbooks. Finish with 2–3 timed mixed runs. Practice • FAQ

60-Day Balanced Plan

Weeks Focus
1–2 Batch + Delta correctness (CDC, merges, backfills)
3–4 Streaming fundamentals (watermarks, state, checkpointing)
5–6 DLT + quality + orchestration
7–8 Performance tuning + mixed sets under time

90-Day Part-Time Plan

Month Focus
1 Foundations (Delta correctness + incremental batch)
2 Streaming + DLT
3 Performance + troubleshooting + timed runs

Practice loop (high ROI)

  • Convert every miss into a 1‑sentence rule (“watermark bounds state; without it state grows unbounded”).
  • Prefer answers that improve observability and recoverability (checkpointing, expectations, staged rollouts).
  • Re-drill weak sections within 24–48 hours.
Overview
Syllabus