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Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert is the credential for engineers who run delivery pipelines on Azure DevOps and GitHub, and Microsoft retires it on February 1, 2027. This October 2026 guide covers the AZ-400 exam, its five skill areas and their weights, the AZ-104 prerequisite, the passing score and fee, renewal, the AZ-401 replacement, and the DevOps roles it fits.
Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert, earned through exam AZ-400, is Microsoft’s expert-level certification for the engineers who build, secure and run the delivery pipeline across Azure DevOps and GitHub.
Its target candidate is a developer or infrastructure administrator who also handles people, process and tooling. In practice that means work tracking in Azure Boards and GitHub Projects, branching and pull request policy, YAML pipelines in Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions, secrets in Azure Key Vault, and telemetry in Azure Monitor. Build and release pipelines alone carry 50 to 55 percent of the exam, so treat it as a pipeline exam first and everything else second.
The certification needs a qualifying associate credential, and with AZ-204 retired on July 31, 2026, that means the Azure Administrator (AZ-104) for new candidates. It is issued and maintained by Microsoft. The English exam was last updated on July 27, 2026, and Microsoft has announced that AZ-400 and the certification retire on February 1, 2027, with the Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-401) taking over.
GitHub Flow, Azure Boards and GitHub Projects, DevOps metrics, wikis and webhooks. 10 to 15%.
Branch strategies, pull request policies and protection rules, Git LFS and repository permissions. 10 to 15%.
Packages, testing, YAML pipelines, deployment patterns and infrastructure as code. The big one at 50 to 55%.
Service principals and managed identities, Key Vault, OpenID Connect and GitHub Advanced Security. 10 to 15%.
Azure Monitor, Application Insights, GitHub insights and basic KQL. The smallest area at 5 to 10%.
Four things that set the DevOps Engineer Expert apart from the rest of Microsoft’s Azure lineup in 2026, including the date it stops being available.
Most Azure exams stay inside Azure. AZ-400 works across Azure DevOps (Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Artifacts) and GitHub (Actions, Packages, Projects, Advanced Security), and it expects you to choose between them. A scenario might ask whether a team should run GitHub Actions or Azure Pipelines, or how to connect Azure Boards to a GitHub repository.
Build and release pipelines carry 50 to 55 percent of AZ-400. That one area spans package feeds, test strategy, YAML pipelines, runners and agents, blue-green and canary deployments, Bicep and ARM, and moving classic pipelines to YAML. Weak pipeline skills are hard to make up anywhere else on the exam.
The expert badge needs a qualifying associate certification. With AZ-204 retired, that means AZ-104 for anyone starting now. Our Azure Administrator (AZ-104) guide covers that exam, its five domains and its free annual renewal.
Microsoft retires AZ-400 and DevOps Engineer Expert on February 1, 2027, according to its October 15, 2026 announcement. After that date nobody can take the exam or earn the certification, though people who already hold it keep it on their Microsoft Learn transcript.
Expert certifications normally last one year and renew free through an online assessment, but Microsoft doesn’t offer renewal once a certification retires. The successor, Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-401), is in beta, with general availability expected in December 2026.
The certification, the AZ-400 exam, and how maintenance works as of October 2026, retirement included.
AZ-400 is the top of Microsoft’s DevOps path, and its successor is already in beta. From here most engineers either move to AZ-401 or add a tool-specific credential. The three below are the common next steps.
Microsoft’s replacement. AZ-401 keeps the five AZ-400 skill areas but moves weight off pipelines (35 to 40 percent) and onto instrumentation (15 to 20 percent). It adds GitHub Copilot, MCP servers, GitHub Agentic Workflows and Azure SRE Agent. Microsoft’s announcement says you also need GH-300 or AZ-104 for the credential.
For engineers whose infrastructure as code reaches past Bicep and ARM. Terraform Associate (004) is a one-hour online exam at $70.50 that tests Terraform on any cloud, and it stays valid for two years. Our Terraform Associate guide covers the eight objectives.
AZ-400 sits at the expert tier of Microsoft’s role-based path. It builds on the AZ-104 associate credential, and after February 1, 2027 the DevOps path continues through AZ-401.
What you need first
The Microsoft DevOps credential
Pick your path
Two questions to answer before you commit: can you earn it before February 1, 2027, and should you pursue AZ-400 with its successor already in beta. Here’s a straight answer to both.
The badge needs an associate credential too.
AZ-400 has no booking prerequisite, so you can register through Pearson VUE for a test center or an online proctored session. Microsoft only awards DevOps Engineer Expert once you also hold Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), or an Azure Developer Associate you earned before AZ-204 retired on July 31, 2026.
Both pieces have to land before February 1, 2027.
Microsoft says you can’t take a retired exam or earn its certification after the retirement date. If you don’t hold AZ-104 yet, that’s two exams in a little over three months. Microsoft also expects experience both administering and developing in Azure, plus time with GitHub and Azure DevOps. The objectives are written as design and implement tasks, not definitions to memorize.
AZ-400 maps to the delivery, platform and reliability roles that sit between development and operations on teams building on Azure and GitHub.
The job role Microsoft names for this certification. Builds and maintains the pipelines, branching rules and release process that move code from commit to production across Azure DevOps and GitHub.
Builds the shared runners, agents, YAML templates and Azure Deployment Environments that other teams deploy through. The AZ-400 pipeline and infrastructure as code objectives line up closely with this work.
Owns uptime and recovery. The AZ-400 objectives on time to recovery and lead time, deployment resiliency, and Azure Monitor telemetry map to the reliability side of the job.
Manages versioning, package feeds, release gates and hotfix paths. SemVer and CalVer strategy, Azure Artifacts and GitHub Packages, and approval checks all come straight from the exam outline.
Puts security inside the pipeline with secret scanning, CodeQL, Dependabot alerts, Defender for Cloud DevOps Security, and secretless authentication through workload identity federation.
Deploys and runs Azure workloads from code instead of the portal. Bicep, ARM templates, desired state configuration and deployment slots tie AZ-400 back to the AZ-104 foundation.
AZ-400 sits above the AZ-104 associate exam and is about to hand over to AZ-401. Terraform Associate is the vendor-neutral infrastructure as code option. Here’s how the four line up.
| DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400) | Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-401) | Azure Administrator (AZ-104) | Terraform Associate (004) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer | Microsoft | Microsoft | Microsoft | HashiCorp |
| Level | Expert | Expert | Associate | Associate |
| Focus | Delivery pipelines on Azure DevOps and GitHub | AI-assisted DevOps with GitHub Copilot and agents | Operating Azure environments | Terraform infrastructure as code on any cloud |
| Prerequisites | AZ-104 (or an earlier AZ-204) for the credential | GH-300 or AZ-104, per Microsoft’s announcement | None (rec. 6 months) | None |
| Exam | Count not published, 100 min | Beta, English only | 40 to 60 items, 100 min | Multiple choice, online proctored, 1 hour |
| Passing Score | 700 of 1000 | 700 of 1000 (beta results after go-live) | 700 of 1000 | Not published by HashiCorp |
| Cost | $165 | $165 | $165 | $70.50 plus taxes and fees |
| Validity | 1 year, no renewal after retirement | 1 year, free renewal | 1 year, free renewal | 2 years |
| Status | Retires February 1, 2027 | Beta, general availability expected December 2026 | Current | Current |
| Best For | DevOps and release engineers finishing before the cutoff | DevOps engineers adding AI tools to the pipeline | Cloud administrators | DevOps and platform engineers on any cloud |
Microsoft prices are US list prices from Microsoft’s exam pricing data and vary by region and taxes. AZ-401 details come from Microsoft’s beta exam page and announcement and may change at general availability. Terraform Associate figures come from our Terraform Associate guide.
Certification Matchups: the published facts, strengths and weak spots of 33 certifications, side by side.
As an authorized Microsoft training partner, our five-day Azure DevOps Engineer Expert boot camp covers all five AZ-400 skill areas with hands-on labs in Azure DevOps and GitHub, official Microsoft courseware, your exam voucher, and a retake voucher if you need one. The course plan has you sit AZ-400 on the final day, so pick a class that ends before the February 1, 2027 retirement.
Where AZ-400 sits in Microsoft’s 2026 lineup, how it connects to the GitHub exams, and what this year’s retirements mean for your path.
Which Microsoft exams people actually sit in 2026, from AZ-104 and AZ-305 to AZ-400 for DevOps, with the US fee for each and the retired codes to stop studying for.
What GH-900, GH-200, GH-300, GH-500, GH-100 and GH-600 each cover, and how the GitHub track relates to AZ-400 for engineers who run pipelines on Azure.
Why Microsoft retired so many certifications in 2026, which exams replaced them, and what happens to a credential on your transcript once it retires.
The full Microsoft map across the fundamentals, associate and expert tiers, including why AZ-400 now depends on AZ-104 after the AZ-204 retirement.
What the Azure Copilot agents for deployment, observability, troubleshooting and optimization do, and how agent-driven cloud operations change incident response. Useful background before AZ-401.
Whether to start with Azure Fundamentals or go straight to AZ-104, the associate exam that DevOps Engineer Expert candidates now need first.
How the three hands-on Kubernetes exams differ, who each one fits, and the order to take them in if containers are your next step after AZ-400.
Microsoft organizes AZ-400 into five skill areas, each with its own weight. Build and release pipelines alone make up 50 to 55 percent, about as much as the other four together. Click any skill area for what it covers.
Structuring the flow of work with GitHub Flow, feedback cycles through notifications and GitHub Issues, and work tracking across GitHub Projects, Azure Boards and repositories, with source, bug and quality traceability. It also covers DevOps dashboards and queries (cycle time, lead time, time to recovery), project wikis written in Markdown and Mermaid, release notes and API documentation, documentation generated from Git history, webhooks, and the Azure Boards, GitHub and Microsoft Teams integrations.
Choosing a branch strategy (trunk-based, feature branch or release branch), building pull request workflows with branch policies and branch protection rules, and restricting merges. The repository half covers large files with Git LFS and git-fat, scaling Git with Scalar and cross-repository sharing, permissions, tags, and recovering or removing specific data with Git commands.
The heaviest area by far. Package management with GitHub Packages and Azure Artifacts, feeds, views and upstream sources, and SemVer or CalVer versioning. Test strategy, quality and release gates, and code coverage. YAML pipelines in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines, runner and agent infrastructure, triggers, multi-stage jobs, templates, variable groups, and checks and approvals. Deployment patterns (blue-green, canary, ring, feature flags with Azure App Configuration, slot swaps, hotfix paths, database tasks), infrastructure as code with ARM, Bicep, Azure Automation State Configuration, Azure Machine Configuration and Azure Deployment Environments, and pipeline upkeep, from flaky tests and cost to migrating classic pipelines to YAML.
Choosing between Microsoft Entra service principals and managed identities, managing GitHub Apps, GITHUB_TOKEN and personal access tokens, Azure DevOps service connections, and permissions and access levels on both platforms. Secrets, keys and certificates in Azure Key Vault, secretless authentication with workload identity federation (OpenID Connect), Azure Pipelines secure files, and leak prevention. Scanning covers dependencies, code, secrets and licenses, Microsoft Defender for Cloud DevOps Security, GitHub Advanced Security for GitHub and for Azure DevOps, container scanning with CodeQL, and Dependabot alerts.
Connecting Azure Monitor and Azure Monitor Logs to DevOps tools, and collecting telemetry with Application Insights, VM Insights, Container Insights, and Azure Monitor for Storage and Networks. Then GitHub insights and charts, alerts for GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines events, infrastructure indicators (CPU, memory, disk, network), distributed tracing in Application Insights, and basic Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries against logs.
Skill areas and weights reflect the Microsoft AZ-400 study guide, skills measured as of July 27, 2026 for the English exam. Localized versions update about eight weeks after English. AZ-400 retires on February 1, 2027, so confirm the current outline on Microsoft Learn before you schedule.
The questions candidates ask most often when researching the Microsoft DevOps Engineer Expert certification, including what the 2027 retirement means.
Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert is Microsoft’s expert-level certification for engineers who build and run software delivery on Azure DevOps and GitHub. You earn it by passing exam AZ-400, Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions, and holding a qualifying associate certification. The exam covers work tracking, source control, build and release pipelines, security and compliance, and monitoring.
Yes. On October 15, 2026, Microsoft announced that exam AZ-400 and the DevOps Engineer Expert certification retire on February 1, 2027. The replacement is Microsoft Certified: Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert, earned through exam AZ-401, which is in beta now with general availability expected in December 2026. As of October 21, 2026, the AZ-400 exam page on Microsoft Learn still showed no retirement date, so go by the announcement.
If you already hold AZ-104 and you’re most of the way through AZ-400 prep, finishing before February 1, 2027 makes sense, because the expert certification stays on your Microsoft Learn transcript after it retires. If you haven’t started, look hard at AZ-401. It keeps the same five skill areas, adds GitHub Copilot, MCP servers and Azure SRE Agent, and has no announced retirement date. Anyone who earns DevOps Engineer Expert from now on won’t reach a renewal window before it retires.
Microsoft requires one of two associate certifications: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) or Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204). AZ-204 retired on July 31, 2026, so AZ-104 is the only one a new candidate can still earn. AZ-400 itself has no booking requirement, but the expert certification isn’t awarded until you hold both, and it can’t be earned after February 1, 2027.
The five skill areas are Design and implement processes and communications (10 to 15 percent), Design and implement a source control strategy (10 to 15 percent), Design and implement build and release pipelines (50 to 55 percent), Develop a security and compliance plan (10 to 15 percent), and Implement an instrumentation strategy (5 to 10 percent). Pipelines carry about half the exam.
Microsoft doesn’t publish a question count for AZ-400. Its exam guidance says most Microsoft certification exams have 40 to 60 questions, and the number can vary. Associate and expert exams without labs run 100 minutes, with 120 minutes of seat time, and you see your exact time when you register. Microsoft’s free exam sandbox shows the question types you could get, such as case studies, drag and drop, hot area, and multiple choice.
You need 700 or higher on a scale of 1 to 1,000. It’s a scaled score, so 700 doesn’t mean 70 percent correct. Microsoft sets the line based on the skills being tested and the difficulty of the questions you get. There’s no penalty for guessing, and some questions may be unscored items Microsoft is trying out for future exams.
As of October 2026, AZ-400 costs $165 USD in the United States, based on Microsoft’s exam pricing data. Prices vary by country and don’t include taxes. Training Camp’s Azure DevOps Engineer Expert boot camp includes the exam voucher and one retake voucher if you need it. If you fail, you can retake after 24 hours, then wait 14 days between later attempts, with a limit of five tries in 12 months.
It’s valid for one year. Normally you renew free by passing a short, unproctored, open-book assessment on Microsoft Learn in the six months before expiry, and passing extends it one year from the expiration date. The retirement changes that. Microsoft says renewal isn’t available once a certification retires, so holders whose window opens before February 1, 2027 should renew before that date. The credential stays on your transcript either way.
AZ-400 maps to roles such as DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, Build and Release Engineer, DevSecOps Engineer, and Azure Cloud Engineer. Microsoft lists DevOps Engineer as the job role and describes the work as part of cross-functional teams with developers, site reliability engineers, Azure administrators, and security engineers.
It’s an expert exam, and the hard part is breadth across two platforms. You need to know Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions, Azure Artifacts and GitHub Packages, and Azure DevOps and GitHub permissions well enough to choose between them in a scenario. Microsoft lets you open Microsoft Learn during expert exams, but the clock keeps running, so it helps with an occasional lookup, not every question. The free AZ-400 practice assessment on Microsoft Learn is a good early check.
For someone who already holds AZ-104 and is close to exam-ready, yes. The skills it tests (YAML pipelines, deployment strategies, Key Vault and workload identity federation, Azure Monitor) are the same ones AZ-401 builds on. For someone starting from zero, the timing is poor. AZ-104 and AZ-400 are a lot to pass before February 1, 2027, and the expert credential can’t be renewed once it retires.
Tell us where you stand on AZ-104, AZ-400 or AZ-401, or what your team needs for DevOps training, and we’ll help you plan the next step before the February 2027 cutoff.