Introducing 2 NEW dbt Learn advanced courses to help you prepare for the dbt Certification Exam

dbt Labs has helped mint more than 12,000 analytics engineers through private and public training programs like dbt Learn Fundamentals. Now anyone can learn dbt for free in self-paced online modules. We’ve also certified more than 400 dbt developers through the dbt Certification program—a paid proctored exam designed to validate dbt skills and expertise.

In an effort to further enable those preparing for the exam, we’re proud to share the launch of “advanced” level courses—dbt Learn Advanced Testing, and dbt Learn Advanced Deployment. With the debut of these modules, there are now 7 free dbt Learn courses designed to help you master best practices on your analytic engineering journey. Courses include:

• dbt Learn Fundamentals*
• dbt Learn, Jinja, Macros, and Packages
• dbt Learn Advanced Materializations
• dbt Learn Analyses and Seeds
• dbt Learn Refactoring SQL for Modularity
• NEW: dbt Learn Advanced Testing
• NEW: dbt Learn Advanced Deployment

*The dbt Learn Fundamentals course uses dbt Cloud as an instructional environment. Within this course you’ll receive instruction for setting up a free two-week dbt Cloud trial account – more than enough time to complete that course and experiment a bit on your own!

The newest additions to the dbt Learn curriculum—Advanced Testing and Advanced Deployment—are specifically designed to help you prepare for dbt Certification. They are must-haves if you plan to sit for the proctored exam! Read on to learn more about these courses, and the exam.

dbt Learn Advanced Testing

The most comprehensive guide on building and launching dbt tests. Unlike the introduction to testing received in the dbt Fundamentals course, this 4 hour course exposes all possible dbt tests, how to implement, assess, and audit, and even how to test your tests. To determine whether this course is right for you and your skills/goals, check out our answers to a few expected questions:

Q: What am I expected to know before taking this course?

A: You’ll need to be proficient in SQL, and have a strong grounding in dbt core concepts (model development, packages, generic dbt tests)

Q: Who should consider this course?

A: If you maintain or contribute to a dbt project, with responsibility for troubleshooting if models (or something downstream of models) breaks—this course is absolutely for you.

Q: Do I really need this if I know some basic tests?

A: This course also provides insight into better testing practices. Save time, increase confidence in your code, and learn how to document with assertions to streamline future contributions.

Looking for more information on testing? Check out these resources:

• Building a Resilient dbt Project
• Tracking dbt Test Success Rates Over Time
• The Analytics Engineering Guide: Data Testing

dbt Learn Advanced Deployments

Learn the relationship between deployment environments, jobs, and runs in dbt Cloud, as well as how to configure each for your project. In this 4 hour course, we will cover:

• Deployment Architecture in dbt Cloud: Master two common approaches for deploying dbt — direct promotion and indirect promotion.
• Job structures + Orchestration: Examine common job types, and learn how to orchestrate without conflicts while using the dbt Cloud API.
• Continuous Integration: Leverage slim CI to bring quality assurance to your pipelines before you hit merge on your latest pull request with automated checks.
• Custom Environment and Job behavior: Differentiate how dbt behaves across production and development environments.

Looking for additional resources on CI/CD in dbt? Check out this blog post on getdbt.com.

Get Certified

Years of studying thousands of dbt deployments has shown us what it takes to ensure safe, consistent, and collaborative use of dbt. We built the free dbt Learn training program around these best practices to enable everyone to gain a foothold in dbt development.

We launched the dbt Certification Program to enable developers to showcase their ability to take these learnings to the next level—by seeking out additional training materials, tutorials, and community resources. Through the dbt Certification program, developers can signal to teammates that the skills the’ve acquired through dedicated study have been rigorously tested and verified by those building dbt everyday.

As a dbt Certified Developer, you can:

• Validate your skills so you can have confidence in your own work, while giving teammates confidence in your ability to elevate new and existing initiatives.
• Stand out to recruiters with a digital certificate signaling your dbt expertise that can be shared on your resume, social network profiles, and personal or professional website.
• Advance your career by showing your commitment to honing your craft, and dedication to expanding scope of work and responsibility.

Over 400 data practitioners have already been certified—just 3 months after launch. Check out what a few certified dbt Developers had to say about the exam, as well as their best tips on how to prepare!

• How to become a dbt Certified Developer, by Raul Maldonado
• Preparing for the dbt 'Analytics Engineering' Certification by Paul Fry
• dbt certification feedback, by Charles Verleyen

Note: While the Advanced Testing and Advanced Deployment modules, along with the rest of the dbt Learn training programs are critical assets to help prepare for certification, they alone won’t cover the depth of what you’d need to be certified. To ensure you can adequately prepare, we created this study guide which outlines all information requirements.

Sign up for the exam now!