Tag: Certification

Four of a Kind – Azure Certifications for Software Developers

I have finally collected all four Azure credentials that I’ve been seeking. This was my goal for the last 6 months, and I achieved it today 28 November 2025.

Let me tell you a bit on why it was important for me to get certified, and why I selected these four certifications.

An Azure certification is an important tool if you’re a contractor, because it acts as a credential when looking for contracts. For me as a freelance consultant, I don’t have a big firm validating my knowledge, but have to stand completely on my own merit. One way to get someone to vouch for you, is to take an Azure certification. That way, Microsoft vouch that I know these topics that I’m certified on.

If you’re not freelance like me, it can still be helpful to take a certification, to increase your value within the company. These certifications are counted towards the company’s Microsoft partner level, which comes with benefits. The certificates are also personal, so if you plan on looking for a new job, they are a merit in your job search and might land you a better offer.

I’ve chosen to take the following certificates

I will give you my view on why these certificates are the most important for a software developer on the Microsoft stack.

Azure Administrator Associate

As a software developer this is a really cool certification as it helps you learn the things that you don’t come in contact with very often, like setting up an Azure subscription from scratch, Azure networking and how to secure your solution in Azure.

Even if this certificate is more directed at IT Operations, it’s knowledge that’s also very useful to know as a software developer.

Azure Developer Associate

This certification is a must have if you’re writing software that is run on Azure. It helps you understand how to write cloud native solutions, by utilizing the features that are provided in Azure. I have so many times seen developers reinventing the wheel, when there’s already a native Azure solution for the same problem.

This certification will help you learn about all those features, so you don’t have to implement them yourself.

Azure Solutions Architect Expert

If you are going to be consulting on Azure, you need to get this certification. It will help you get a grip on all the service offerings on Azure. You will get the birds eye view on governance, security and how Microsoft intends Azure to be used in an enterprise setting.

After completing this certification you will see Azure as a set of puzzle pieces and know how to fit them together into a working system.

DevOps Engineer Expert

This last certification, that I completed today, teaches you how to deliver software in a cloud environment. How can you shorten the cycle time, and at the same time increase quality and security in your software delivery pipeline.

Once you have these four certifications, you have a pretty good grip on how to develop, deliver and host software in a Microsoft setting.

This article was written without AI.

Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

Today I passed my AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure exam and became an Azure Developer Associate. I’ve done some certifications in my days, but this was by far the hardest. The breadth of the knowledge required, Azure SDKs, data storage, data connections, APIs, authentication, authorisation, compute, containers, deployment performance and monitoring – combined with the extreme details in the questions, made this really hard. I didn’t think that I passed until I got my result.

These were the kind of questions that were asked

  • Case studies: Read up on a case study and answer questions on how to solve the client’s particular problems with Azure services. Questions like, what storage technology is appropriate, what service tier should you recommend, and such.
  • Many questions about the capabilities of different services. Like, what event passing service should you use if you need guaranteed FIFO (first-in, first-out)
  • How to setup a particular scenario. Like what order you should create services in order to solve the problem at hand. Some of these questions where down to CLI commands, so make sure that you’ve dipped your toes into Azure CLI.
  • Code questions where you need to fill in the blanks on how to connect and send messages on a service bus, or provision a set of services with an ARM template. You also get code questions where you should answer questions about the result of the code.

Because of the huge area of expertise and the extreme details of the questions, I don’t think you could study and pass the exam without hands-on development experience. If I were to give advice on what to study it would be

  • Go through the Online – Free preparation material. Make sure you remember the capabilities of each service, how they differentiate, and what features higher pricing tiers enables. Those questions are guaranteed.
  • Do some exercises on connecting Azure Functions, blob storage, service bus, queue storage, event grid and event hub. These were central in the exam.
  • Make sure you know how to manage authorisation to services like blob storage and the benefits of the different ways to do it. Know your Azure KeyVault as the security questions emphasise on this.

Be prepared that it is much harder than AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, go slow and use up all the time that you get. Good Luck!