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Everything you need to know about the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate, the exam formerly called SysOps Administrator Associate, as of 2026. This guide covers the SOA-C03 exam, the five domains and their weights, the format and passing score, what changed from SOA-C02, DoD 8140 status, the operations roles it fits, and where it sits on the AWS path.
The AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate is Amazon Web Services' certification for the people who deploy, manage, and operate workloads on AWS. Until September 2025 it was called the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate.
Where the Solutions Architect Associate asks you to design an environment, this exam asks you to run one. It validates that you can support workloads according to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, work from both the console and the CLI, implement security controls, monitor and troubleshoot systems, apply networking fundamentals, and carry out backup, recovery, and incident remediation when something breaks.
The credential carries no formal prerequisites, though AWS recommends about one year of experience operating workloads on AWS and suggests the Cloud Practitioner first for anyone with no IT background. It is issued by Amazon Web Services, and the current exam is SOA-C03, described by exam guide version 1.1. The new CloudOps name applies to everyone who passes SOA-C03.
CloudWatch, EventBridge, automated remediation, and tuning compute, storage, and databases. 22%.
Scaling, load balancing, Multi-AZ, backups, restores, and disaster recovery. 22%.
AMIs, CloudFormation and CDK, StackSets, Systems Manager, and event-driven automation. 22%.
IAM, access auditing, encryption, secrets, and security service findings. The smallest domain at 16%.
VPC configuration, Route 53, CloudFront, and network troubleshooting. 18%.
Four things to know about the credential AWS rebuilt for operations work in 2025, and what makes it different from the other Associate exams.
AWS retired the SOA-C02 exam on September 29, 2025 and launched SOA-C03 the next day under a new name, AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate. AWS says the change reflects how the industry now describes cloud operations work. The job did not change, the label did. Anyone who passes SOA-C03 earns the CloudOps title, and existing SysOps Administrator holders keep their credential under its original name until it expires.
The other Associate exams test design and development. This one tests operations: the alarm that has to fire, the stack that has to deploy, the backup that has to restore inside its RPO. Designing distributed architectures and CI/CD pipelines is explicitly out of scope, which keeps the exam close to a systems administrator's actual week.
SOA-C02 included a hands-on lab section. SOA-C03 drops it: all 65 questions are multiple choice or multiple response. The five domains also replace six, with the old Cost and Performance Optimization domain folded into monitoring and reliability. Our article on what is changing with AWS certifications covers the wider lineup.
The CloudOps Associate is not a DoD 8140 credential. It does not appear in the Qualification Matrix V2.1, so on its own it will not satisfy a cyber-coded position requirement. The current matrix is published at the DoD Cyber Exchange.
Its weight comes from the market instead. AWS runs a large share of enterprise and government workloads, every one of those environments needs people to operate it, and the exam is built on the AWS Well-Architected Framework that those organizations audit against. Federal cloud operations roles routinely ask for AWS certifications even though they sit outside the 8140 matrix.
Everything you need to know about the certification, the SOA-C03 exam, and how to maintain it, verified against the AWS certification page on September 30, 2026.
The CloudOps Associate is the operations rung of the AWS path, not the top of it. From here, most people go up into the Professional tier, sideways into architecture, or across to a second cloud. These are the three common moves.
The direct next step. The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02) is the Professional-tier exam that builds on CloudOps operations skills, and earning it automatically recertifies your CloudOps Associate. It is a significant step up in scope and difficulty.
The sideways move from running environments to designing them. The Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) uses the same format, length, and price, and many operations engineers add it once they have a year or two of production experience behind them.
The second-cloud move. Many operations teams run AWS alongside Microsoft workloads, and the Azure Administrator (AZ-104) is the closest Azure equivalent to the CloudOps Associate: same associate tier, same operate-the-environment focus.
The CloudOps Engineer Associate sits at the associate tier of the AWS path. It builds on the foundational Cloud Practitioner, and from there the path climbs to the DevOps Engineer Professional, branches into specialties, or crosses into a second cloud.
The cloud groundwork
The cloud operations credential
Pick your path
Two questions to answer before you commit: can you sit it, and should you pursue the CloudOps Associate specifically. Here's a straight answer to both.
No prerequisites, no gatekeeping.
There is no required credential before SOA-C03 and no Cloud Practitioner gate. You register through AWS and take the exam at a Pearson VUE testing center or online with a proctor. That open door makes it a realistic first AWS certification for anyone who already administers servers, storage, or networks.
The exam assumes you have run things in production.
AWS recommends a year of deploying, managing, and operating workloads on AWS, plus a year in an operations role such as systems administration. It also recommends the Cloud Practitioner first for anyone with no IT experience. The questions describe broken environments and ask what you would do, and that is hard to answer from reading alone.
The CloudOps Associate maps to the roles that keep AWS environments running after they have been designed and built. AWS itself lists cloud operations engineer, systems administrator, support engineer, and cloud operator among the jobs the exam is meant for.
The role the exam is named for. Keeps production AWS workloads healthy day to day: monitoring, patching, scaling, backups, incident response, and the automation that removes repeat work.
The classic on-premises admin who now runs servers, storage, and networks on AWS. The CloudOps Associate maps the skills you already have onto EC2, EBS, VPC, and Systems Manager.
Owns availability targets and the alarms, runbooks, and recovery procedures behind them. Domains 1 and 2 of SOA-C03 are the SRE toolkit on AWS.
Diagnoses customer and internal issues across compute, networking, IAM, and storage. The troubleshooting emphasis of the exam, from VPC flow logs to CloudFormation errors, is the daily work.
Builds and runs the delivery pipeline and the infrastructure as code beneath it. The CloudOps Associate covers the operating side, and the DevOps Engineer Professional is the natural next exam.
Provisions and maintains the shared account, network, and identity layer other teams build on, using CloudFormation, StackSets, AWS Organizations, and AWS RAM across accounts and Regions.
The CloudOps Associate shares a tier with the AWS Solutions Architect Associate and the Microsoft Azure Administrator. Here's how the three line up.
| CloudOps Engineer Associate | Solutions Architect Associate | Azure Administrator (AZ-104) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer | AWS | AWS | Microsoft |
| Level | Associate | Associate | Associate |
| Focus | Running and automating AWS workloads | Designing AWS architectures | Operating Azure environments |
| Prerequisites | None (rec. 1 year) | None (rec. 1 year) | None (rec. 6 months) |
| Exam | 65 items, 130 min, no labs | 65 items, 130 min | 40 to 60 items, 100 min |
| Passing Score | 720 of 1000 | 720 of 1000 | 700 of 1000 |
| Exam Cost | $150 | $150 | $165 |
| Validity | 3 years | 3 years | 1 year, free renewal |
| Best For | Cloud operations and systems administrators | Cloud architects and engineers | Administrators on Microsoft-first teams |
Pricing varies by region and taxes. None of the three appear on the DoD 8140 Approved Qualifications Matrix V2.1; their recognition is market-driven rather than DoD-listed. Full guides: Solutions Architect Associate and Azure Administrator.
Our AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate boot camp runs three days live online on official AWS courseware, with six hands-on labs, a mock exam, your $150 SOA-C03 exam voucher, and a free course retake included, so you leave ready to sit the exam.
What is changing across AWS certifications, whether to start with Cloud Practitioner, how to study from the exam guide, and where operations skills go next.
The AWS certification lineup keeps shifting, and the SysOps to CloudOps rename is part of it. Which exams retired, which replaced them, and how to pick the right one for the job you want.
AWS suggests Cloud Practitioner first if you have no IT experience. Here is what the foundational exam covers, who benefits, and when it makes sense to skip it and go straight to an Associate exam.
Most operations teams touch more than one cloud. When adding AZ-104 after an AWS Associate pays off, how the platforms map to each other, and when one cloud is enough.
The SOA-C03 exam guide lists every task statement and skill AWS can test. How to turn that document into a study plan instead of reading it once and forgetting it.
Salary surveys put cloud credentials near the top every year. A sober read of where those numbers come from, what they leave out, and how an operations certification fits the picture.
AWS renews on a three-year exam cycle rather than annual continuing education credits. How that compares with ISACA, ISC2, CompTIA, and Microsoft, and what it means for keeping your credentials active.
Container and orchestration basics are recommended knowledge for SOA-C03, and Amazon EKS is in scope. If your operations work is heading toward Kubernetes, this is how the three CNCF exams line up.
The SOA-C03 exam is organized into five domains under exam guide version 1.1. Three of them carry 22 percent each, and the six-domain SOA-C02 structure is gone: the old Cost and Performance Optimization domain now lives inside Domains 1 and 2. Click any domain for what it covers.
Setting up CloudWatch metrics, alarms, dashboards, and the CloudWatch agent, and routing events through EventBridge and SNS so problems surface and get acted on. It also covers automated remediation with Systems Manager runbooks and Lambda, and tuning EC2, EBS, S3, EFS, and RDS for performance and cost, the material that was its own domain on SOA-C02.
Scaling compute and managed databases, adding caching with CloudFront and ElastiCache, and building fault-tolerant systems with Elastic Load Balancing, Route 53 health checks, and Multi-AZ deployments. Backup and restore is the other half: automating snapshots with AWS Backup, point-in-time restores against RTO and RPO targets, S3 versioning, and following disaster recovery procedures.
Building AMIs and container images with EC2 Image Builder, managing stacks with CloudFormation and the AWS CDK, sharing resources across accounts and Regions with StackSets and AWS RAM, and fixing the subnet sizing, template, and permissions errors that come up along the way. Then automating what already exists with Systems Manager, Lambda, S3 Event Notifications, and third-party tools such as Terraform and Git.
IAM in depth: password policies, MFA, roles, federated identity, resource policies, and policy conditions, plus auditing access with CloudTrail, IAM Access Analyzer, and the policy simulator across a multi-account setup. Data protection covers classification, encryption at rest with KMS and in transit with ACM, secrets storage, and working the findings from Security Hub, GuardDuty, AWS Config, and Inspector.
Configuring VPCs end to end, from subnets, route tables, network ACLs, and security groups to NAT and internet gateways, private connectivity, and network protection services such as AWS WAF, Shield, and Network Firewall. It also covers Route 53 DNS and routing policies, CloudFront and Global Accelerator, and troubleshooting connectivity with VPC flow logs, ELB access logs, and CloudWatch network monitoring.
Domains and weights reflect the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (SOA-C03) exam guide, version 1.1, in use since September 30, 2025. AWS refreshes content within a version periodically, so confirm the current exam guide before scheduling.
The questions candidates ask most often when researching the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate, including what happened to the SysOps Administrator.
The AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate is the Amazon Web Services certification for people who deploy, manage, and operate workloads on AWS. The current exam is SOA-C03. It covers monitoring and remediation, reliability and backups, deployment and automation, security and compliance, and networking, and it's the credential that fits cloud operations engineers, systems administrators, and support engineers.
AWS renamed it. The AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate became the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate with the SOA-C03 exam, which went live on September 30, 2025, the day after SOA-C02 retired. The new name applies to people who pass SOA-C03. If you hold an active SysOps Administrator credential from SOA-C02, it stays valid under its original name until it expires.
No formal prerequisites. Anyone can register for SOA-C03. AWS recommends about one year of experience deploying, managing, and operating workloads on AWS, plus a year in a related operations role such as systems administration. AWS also suggests that people with no IT work experience earn the Cloud Practitioner first, but that's advice, not a requirement.
The five domains are Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization (22 percent); Reliability and Business Continuity (22 percent); Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation (22 percent); Security and Compliance (16 percent); and Networking and Content Delivery (18 percent). SOA-C02 had a sixth domain, Cost and Performance Optimization, which SOA-C03 folded into domains 1 and 2.
SOA-C03 has 65 questions, 50 scored and 15 unscored, in 130 minutes. Every question is multiple choice or multiple response. There are no exam labs. SOA-C02 had a hands-on lab section, and its removal is one of the biggest changes in the current version. The unscored questions aren't marked, so treat every question as if it counts.
You need a scaled score of 720 on a scale of 100 to 1,000. AWS uses compensatory scoring, so you don't have to pass each domain separately, only the exam as a whole. Unanswered questions count as wrong and there's no penalty for guessing, so answer everything.
The SOA-C03 exam costs $150 USD, with variation by region and taxes. If you already hold an active AWS certification, your AWS Certification Account includes a 50 percent discount voucher for your next exam. Training Camp's boot camp ($2,495) includes the $150 exam voucher in the program fee.
No. AWS certifications don't appear on the DoD 8140 Approved Qualifications Matrix V2.1, so the CloudOps Associate on its own won't satisfy a cyber-coded position requirement. That said, federal agencies and contractors routinely require AWS certifications for cloud operations roles, since so much government workload runs on AWS. See the full DoD 8140 work role paths.
It's valid for three years. You recertify by passing the latest version of the exam, or by earning the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional, which automatically recertifies this Associate-level credential. AWS also lists maintenance options through AWS Skill Builder on its recertification page.
The credential fits cloud operations engineer, systems administrator moving to cloud, site reliability engineer, cloud support engineer, DevOps engineer, and infrastructure engineer roles. These are the jobs that run AWS environments after an architect has designed them, and job postings for them regularly list an AWS Associate certification as preferred or required.
They share the same format, length, price, and passing score, so choose by the work you do. The Solutions Architect Associate is about designing architectures. The CloudOps Associate is about running and automating them: monitoring, backups, deployments, IAM, and network troubleshooting. If you administer systems today, CloudOps is the closer match. Many people eventually hold both.
It's a working practitioner's exam. The questions describe an operational situation, an alarm that didn't fire, a stack that failed to deploy, an instance that can't reach a database, and ask what you'd do. Reading alone rarely gets people there. Time in a real AWS account with CloudWatch, Systems Manager, CloudFormation, and VPC is what makes the difference, and most candidates plan six to ten weeks of study.
If you run infrastructure on AWS, or want to, yes. It's the one Associate exam built around operating workloads rather than designing or developing them, it's current with the September 2025 refresh, and it leads directly to the DevOps Engineer Professional. If your goal is architecture or you only need cloud literacy, the Solutions Architect Associate or the Cloud Practitioner is the better fit.
If you are weighing the certification, planning the move from SysOps to CloudOps, or arranging AWS operations training for a team, tell us where you are and we'll help you map out the right path.