README (README.md)
Curriculum
Open Source Curriculum for CNCF Certification Courses
This is the latest version of the curriculum for the following CNCF exams:
* Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
* Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
* Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
* Certified GitOps Associate (CGOA)
* Certified Argo Project Associate (CAPA)
* Certified Backstage Associate (CBA)
* Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineering Associate (CNPA)
* Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineer (CNPE)
* Cilium Certified Associate (CCA)
* Istio Certified Associate (ICA)
* Kyverno Certified Associate (KCA)
* Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA)
* Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA)
* OpenTelemetry Certified Associate (OTCA)
* Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA)
If you see any errors with the document, please open an issue here. The document major and minor version (e.g., the 1 and 8 in 1.8.0) match the version of Kubernetes. The patch version (e.g., the 0 in 1.8.0) represents any iterations in the documentation for that version of Kubernetes. Old versions remain available.
CNCF encourages training companies to align their offerings to cover the contents of the curriculum. Training partners can purchase coupons for the CKA exam at a wholesale price to offer at the end of their training.
The Curriculum is available under the CC-BY 4.0+ License.
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Capa/README (capa/README.md)
Certified Argo Project Associate (CAPA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CAPA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s understanding of the Argo project ecosystem and its role in cloud native environments.
It demonstrates knowledge of core Argo components and their use cases, including Argo Workflows, Argo CD, Argo Rollouts, and Argo Events, as well as GitOps principles and best practices for managing Kubernetes applications.
The certification is intended for developers, DevOps engineers, platform engineers, and IT professionals who want to validate their foundational knowledge of the Argo ecosystem and GitOps workflows.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|------------------------------|--------|
| Argo Project Fundamentals | 20% |
| Argo Workflows | 20% |
| Argo CD | 20% |
| Argo Rollouts | 20% |
| Argo Events | 20% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Christian Hernandez
- Harriet Lawrence
- Ishita Sequeira
- Katie Lamkin
- Nicholas Morey
- Regina Voloshin
- Wojtek Cichoń
- Yuan Tang
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Capa/Cba/README (capa/cba/README.md)
Certified Backstage Associate (CBA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CBA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s skills and mindset in building and managing internal developer portals using Backstage, an open platform essential to modern platform engineering workflows.
It demonstrates proficiency in Backstage development workflows, infrastructure setup, catalog management, and plugin customization.
The certification is intended for IT engineers, developers, platform engineers, and other professionals aiming to enhance developer experience and internal tooling at scale.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-------------------------------|--------|
| Backstage Development Workflow | 24% |
| Backstage Infrastructure | 22% |
| Backstage Catalog | 22% |
| Customizing Backstage | 32% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Anand Patil
- André Wanlin
- Christopher Diaz
- Gabriel Dantas
- Jonathan Nagayoshi
- Jorge Lainfiesta
- Josephine Pfeiffer
- Juan Pablo Garcia Ripa
- Kasper Nissen
- Manuel Scurti
- Marky Jackson
- Michael Mcmullen
- Min Kim
- Patrik Oldsberg
- Pierre Fortes
- Remya R Praveen
- Rigin Oommen
- Rohit Ghumare
- Sam Nixon
- Shane Kelly
- Taras Mankovski
- Timothy Chin
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Cca/README (cca/README.md)
Certified Cilium Associate (CCA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CCA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s knowledge of Cilium and its role in cloud native networking, observability, and security.
It demonstrates proficiency in the fundamentals of eBPF-based networking, Cilium architecture and components, Kubernetes networking with Cilium, observability tooling, and enforcing security policies with Cilium.
The certification is intended for Kubernetes administrators, cloud engineers, platform engineers, and other IT professionals who want to validate their skills in modern cloud native networking and security powered by Cilium.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|---------------------------------|--------|
| Cilium Fundamentals | 20% |
| Cilium Architecture & Components | 20% |
| Kubernetes Networking with Cilium | 20% |
| Observability with Cilium | 20% |
| Securing Workloads with Cilium | 20% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Andy Allred
- Daniel Finneran
- Hemanth Malla
- Joseph Ligier
- Liz Rice
- Nicolas Vibert
- Ondrej Blazek
- Peter Jausovec
- Raphaël Pinson
- Tamilmani Manoharan
- Tony Norlin
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Cgoa/README (cgoa/README.md)
Certified GitOps Associate (CGOA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CGOA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s understanding of GitOps principles, practices, and tooling in cloud native environments.
It demonstrates knowledge of GitOps fundamentals, including declarative configuration, version control, continuous delivery, automation, observability, and security considerations in a GitOps workflow.
The certification is intended for developers, DevOps engineers, platform engineers, site reliability engineers, and other IT professionals who want to validate their foundational knowledge of GitOps.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|------------------------------|--------|
| GitOps Fundamentals | 25% |
| GitOps Principles & Practices | 25% |
| GitOps Tooling & Implementation | 25% |
| GitOps Security & Observability | 25% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Amit Dsouza
- Anita Ihuman
- Arsh Sharma
- Batuhan Apaydın
- Brad Mccoy
- Christian Hernandez
- Christopher Lavery
- Dan Garfield
- Giorgi Keratishvili
- Hilliary Lipsig
- Nicholas Morey
- Rachid Zarouali
- Roberth Strand
- Roberto Carratalá
- Ryan Etten
- Samuel De Lima Tauil
- Scott Rigby
- Thomas Schuetz
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Cka/README (cka/README.md)
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CKA certification is designed to ensure that Kubernetes administrators have the skills, knowledge, and competency to perform the responsibilities of Kubernetes administrators.
It demonstrates proficiency in installation, configuration, and management of Kubernetes clusters, including networking, storage, security, troubleshooting, and cluster maintenance.
The certification is intended for Kubernetes administrators, cloud administrators, and other IT professionals who manage Kubernetes clusters.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|------------------------------|--------|
| Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration | 25% |
| Workloads & Scheduling | 15% |
| Services & Networking | 20% |
| Storage | 10% |
| Troubleshooting | 30% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Aaron Crickenberger
- Angel Ramirez
- Deepak Vij
- Derek Mcquay
- Dustin Kirkland
- Hubert Ströbitzer
- Ihor Dvoretskyi
- Jim Angel
- Jose Gonzalez
- Kohei Ota
- Laszlo Budai
- Lucas Käldström
- Marco Ceppi
- Matt Dorn
- Michael Johnston
- Michael Mueller
- Mircea Cosbuc
- Neelesh Pateriya
- Randy Abernethy
- Ryan Jarvinen
- Tim Stoop
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Ckad/README (ckad/README.md)
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CKAD certification is designed to ensure that application developers have the skills, knowledge, and competency to build, configure, and run cloud native applications on Kubernetes.
It demonstrates proficiency in designing, deploying, and troubleshooting applications, including working with core Kubernetes resources, configuration, and multi-container patterns.
The certification is intended for Kubernetes application developers, cloud native engineers, and IT professionals who want to validate their skills in deploying and managing applications on Kubernetes.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-------------------------|--------|
| Application Design and Build | 20% |
| Application Deployment | 20% |
| Application Observability and Maintenance | 15% |
| Application Environment, Configuration and Security | 25% |
| Services and Networking | 20% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Ara Pulido
- Caitriona Mulholland
- Chris Hein
- Christopher Liljenstolpe
- Duffie Cooley
- Eduardo Silva
- Ihor Dvoretskyi
- Jordan Rinke
- Josef Adersberger
- Kohei Ota
- Lucas Käldström
- Luke Heidecke
- Mars Toktonaliev
- Michael Mueller
- Neependra Khare
- Ram Reddy Amanaganti
- Randy Abernethy
- Richard Li
- Scott Malkie
- Scott Rigby
- Sebastian Scheele
- Taylor Dolezal
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Cks/README (cks/README.md)
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) Curriculum
Exam Description
The CKS certification is designed to ensure that Kubernetes security specialists have the skills, knowledge, and competency to secure container-based applications and Kubernetes platforms during build, deployment, and runtime.
It demonstrates proficiency in applying best practices for Kubernetes security, including cluster hardening, system and network security, supply chain security, monitoring, and incident response.
The certification is intended for Kubernetes administrators, cloud security engineers, and other IT professionals who want to validate their expertise in securing Kubernetes environments.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-------------------------|--------|
| Cluster Setup | 10% |
| Cluster Hardening | 15% |
| System Hardening | 15% |
| Minimize Microservice Vulnerabilities | 20% |
| Supply Chain Security | 20% |
| Monitoring, Logging and Runtime Security | 20% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Brad Geesaman
- Chase Pettet
- Chen Xi
- Christopher Hanson
- Duffie Cooley
- Erick De Carty
- Hari Srinivsan
- Itay Shakury
- John Forman
- Kaizhe Huang
- Kohei Ota
- Marco Lancini
- Randy Abernethy
- Ricardo Ferreira
- Saravanan Thiyagarajan
- Yeeling Lam
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Cnpa/README (cnpa/README.md)
Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineering Associate (CNPA) Curriculum
This repository contains the open-source curriculum for the Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineering Associate (CNPA) certification, maintained by CNCF and The Linux Foundation.
Exam Description
The CNPA is designed for engineers and practitioners working with cloud native platforms.
It demonstrates knowledge of platform engineering fundamentals, including automation, observability, security, continuous delivery, developer experience, and infrastructure provisioning.
By earning this certification, candidates prove their ability to contribute to building and operating modern internal developer platforms (IDPs) and enabling efficient, secure, and scalable software delivery within cloud native organizations.
The certification is intended for platform engineers, SREs, DevOps professionals, infrastructure architects, and IT practitioners who want to validate their foundational platform engineering skills.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|--------------------------------------------|--------|
| Platform Engineering Core Fundamentals | 36% |
| Platform Observability, Security & Conformance | 20% |
| Continuous Delivery & Platform Engineering | 16% |
| Platform APIs & Provisioning Infrastructure | 12% |
| IDPs & Developer Experience | 8% |
| Measuring Your Platform | 8% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Aman Pasi
- Andreas Grabner
- Andrew Ravn
- Ashutosh Upadhyay
- Atulpriya Sharma
- Balasundaram Natarajan
- Brian Cook
- Caio Medeiros
- Chris Plank
- Christopher Hanson
- Colin Griffin
- Eddie Wassef
- Faseela K
- George Bamfo
- Giorgi Keratishvili
- Giovanni Lo Vecchio
- Gopal Ramachandran
- Iliyan Petkov
- Imanol Valiente Martín
- Jamie Parker
- Jose Adan Ortiz
- Joshua Bezaleel Abednego
- Luca Galante
- Maciej Filocha
- Mahendran Selvakumar
- Manohar Pinnamshetty
- Matteo Bianchi
- Mauricio Salatino
- Max Körbächer
- Pedro Silva
- Praveen Kg
- Raghavendra Mallela
- Rahul Kumar
- Ramiro Alvarez Fernandez
- Roberth Strand
- Rohit Ghumare
- Rohit Mishra
- Ronald Petty
- Sai Linn Thu
- Saim Safdar
- Sangram Rath
- Santhosh Nc
- Santosh Kumar Perumal
- Sharkrit Impat
- Stefan Daugaard Poulsen
- Suryateja Ganta
- Thiago Finardi
- Turja Chaudhuri
- Vinod Sr
- Viswanathan Manoharan
- Vraj Bhatt
- Whitney Lee
- Łukasz Adamski
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Ica/README (ica/README.md)
Istio Certified Associate (ICA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The ICA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s knowledge of Istio and its role as a service mesh in cloud native environments.
It demonstrates proficiency in Istio architecture, traffic management, observability, security, and integrating Istio with Kubernetes for microservices communication.
The certification is intended for developers, platform engineers, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals who want to validate their foundational Istio and service mesh skills.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-------------------------|--------|
| Istio Fundamentals | 25% |
| Traffic Management | 20% |
| Security | 20% |
| Observability | 20% |
| Advanced Istio Features | 15% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Ajay Mare
- Chris Mazur
- Eitan Suez
- Eric Van Norman
- Faseela K
- Ricardo Hincapie
- Tyler Schade
- Victor Yang
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Kca/README (kca/README.md)
Kyverno Certified Associate (KCA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The KCA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s knowledge and proficiency in using Kyverno as a policy engine for Kubernetes.
It demonstrates expertise in managing policy as code workflows, including Kyverno fundamentals, installation and upgrades, CLI usage, policy writing, application, and management.
The certification is intended for Kubernetes administrators, DevOps and DevSecOps engineers, security analysts, cloud native developers, and compliance professionals aiming to secure and automate Kubernetes environments.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-----------------------------------------|--------|
| Fundamentals of Kyverno | 18% |
| Installation, Configuration & Upgrades | 18% |
| Kyverno CLI | 12% |
| Applying Policies | 10% |
| Writing Policies | 32% |
| Policy Management | 10% |
:contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from Kyverno maintainers and experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Anand Patil
- Anushka Mittal
- Asanka Nissanka
- Atil Eren Sensalduz
- Chimbu Chinnadurai
- Chip Zoller
- Giorgi Keratishvili
- Jim Bugwadia
- Kashif Karim
- Kimiya Sharifi
- Mariam Fahmy
- Matthias Hauber
- Oshi Gupta
- Rishabh Sharma
- Shuting Zhao
- Soojin Lee
- Stanislav Kolenkin
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Kcna/README (kcna/README.md)
KCNA
The Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) certification provides a beginner friendly option to learn about the Kubernetes community and vast cloud native ecosystem of projects. It is intended for developers and non-developers alike that work in the cloud native ecosystem.
This certification will provide an onramp for an individual to get situated in the wider cloud native and CNCF community and help them prepare for future certifications such as CKA/CKAD/CKS and so on.
Domains
* Kubernetes Fundamentals 44%
* Container Orchestration 28%
* Cloud Native Application Delivery 16%
* Cloud Native Architecture 12%
Resources
To help you prepare for the certification, we recommend these materials and courses:
* https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/kubernetes-and-cloud-native-essentials-lfs250/
* https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-cloud-infrastructure-technologies
* https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-kubernetes
* https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-kubernetes-on-edge-with-k3s
* https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-linux
* https://civo.com/academy
* KCNA Course Overview
* KCNA study course on freeCodeCamp
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem
Contributors
- Balasundaram Natarajan
- Chris Aniszczyk
- Chun Wu
- David Mckay
- Dillibabu Sampath
- Divya Mohan
- Dmitry Shurupov
- Edson Celio Araujo
- Eduardo Munari
- Esaya Jokonya
- Eugen Cusmaunsa
- Giorgi Keratishvili
- Ihor Dvoretskyi
- James Evans
- Jeffrey Sica
- Johann Gyger
- Katie Gamanji
- Kris Musard
- Mahendran Selvakumar
- Mars Toktonaliev
- Michael Bright
- N P
- Naeil Ezzoueidi
- Nicola Marco Decandia
- Ramesh Kumar
- Randy Abernethy
- Ricardo Pchevuzinske Katz
- Saiyam Pathak
- Santhosh Nc
- Santosh Kumar Perumal
- Srikar Ananthula
- Tom Kerkhove
- Walid Shaari
- Yunjie Zhu
- Zurab Jishkariani
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Kcsa/README (kcsa/README.md)
Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The KCSA certification is designed to ensure that candidates understand the fundamental principles of securing container-based applications and cloud native environments.
It demonstrates knowledge of cloud native security concepts, including Kubernetes security fundamentals, cloud native security tooling, best practices, and the broader security landscape for cloud native technologies.
The certification is intended for students, developers, administrators, and other IT professionals who want to validate their foundational knowledge of security in the Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystem.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|------------------------------------|--------|
| Cloud Native Fundamentals | 16% |
| Kubernetes Security Fundamentals | 20% |
| Container Security Fundamentals | 20% |
| Secure Software Supply Chain | 16% |
| Monitoring, Logging and Runtime Security | 12% |
| General Security Knowledge | 16% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Anais Urlichs
- Andres Vega
- Andrew Martin
- Carolina Valencia
- Divya Mohan
- Duffie Cooley
- James Callaghan
- Joshua Bloom
- Liz Rice
- Marco De Benedictis
- Matt Jarvis
- Ollie Cuffley-Hur
- Ragashree M C
- Rory Mccune
- Rowan Baker
- Tiffany Jernigan
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Otca/README (otca/README.md)
OpenTelemetry Certified Associate (OTCA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The OTCA certification is designed to validate a candidate’s knowledge of observability fundamentals and the OpenTelemetry project.
It demonstrates proficiency in telemetry data collection, instrumentation, traces, metrics, logs, and integrating OpenTelemetry with observability backends in cloud native environments.
The certification is intended for developers, SREs, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals who want to validate their skills in observability with OpenTelemetry.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|-------------------------------|--------|
| OpenTelemetry Fundamentals | 20% |
| Instrumentation & SDKs | 20% |
| Metrics | 20% |
| Traces | 20% |
| Logs & Exporters | 20% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Adriana Villela
- Albert Lim
- Anand Patil
- Aneesh Ashok
- Austin Parker
- Giorgi Keratishvili
- Hélia Barroso
- Igor Estevan Jasinski
- Janssen Lima
- Juliano Costa
- Juraci Paixão Kröhling
- Kolawole Olowoporoku
- Marcus Teixeira
- Paige Cruz
- Pedro Célestin
- Peter Nguyen
- Rynn Mancuso
- Rémi Verchère
- Sanjay Sachdev
- Severin Neumann
- Stanislav Kolenkin
- Subbarao Turlapati
- Virginia Diana Todea
- Yash Verma
- Yusuke Takei
- Zuzanna Piskorz-Nalecka
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Pca/README (pca/README.md)
Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Curriculum
Exam Description
The PCA certification is designed to ensure that candidates understand the fundamentals of monitoring and observability using Prometheus.
It demonstrates knowledge of Prometheus architecture, data model, query language (PromQL), metrics collection, alerting, and integration within cloud native environments.
The certification is intended for site reliability engineers, DevOps engineers, developers, and IT professionals who want to validate their skills in using Prometheus for monitoring and observability.
More information about the exam can be found on the Linux Foundation Training website.
Domains & Weighting
| Domain | Weight |
|------------------------|--------|
| Fundamentals & Concepts | 20% |
| Prometheus Architecture | 20% |
| PromQL | 30% |
| Instrumentation | 10% |
| Alerting & Recording Rules | 10% |
| Ecosystem & Integrations | 10% |
Contributions
This curriculum is the result of a community-driven effort, with contributions from subject matter experts across the cloud native ecosystem.
Contributors
- Jim Angel
- Johann Gyger
- Julien Pivotto
- Mars Toktonaliev
- Povilas Versockas
- Ramesh Kumar
- Richard Hartmann
- Srikar Ananthula
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