New Certification Launch & Exam Updates You Need to Know

Introducing: AWS Certified AI Business Strategist

A brand-new certification - available now

Built for the professionals who scale AI - not just build it

AWS has long credentialed technical builders. Now, there's a certification designed specifically for the professionals who evaluate, champion, and scale AI initiatives within their organizations. This exam tests portable business judgment through enterprise-based scenarios - no coding or AWS implementation experience required.

Who it's for:

• Line-of-business leaders driving AI adoption across teams
• Sales professionals articulating AI value to customers
• Consultants guiding client strategy from experimentation to production
• Program & product managers aligning AI investments to outcomes
• Marketing professionals and business analysts

★ Early Adopter Bonus: Earn this certification by February 15, 2027 and receive an exclusive Early Adopter digital badge in addition to the credential badge.

85

Questions

170

Minutes

$50

Beta Price

6 mo

Rec. Experience

What the Exam Covers

• AI Fundamentals & Literacy - Practical understanding of AI capabilities & limitations in a business context
• AI Strategy & Business Value Creation - Evaluating use cases, building business cases, quantifying ROI (largest domain)
• AI Governance & Responsible AI Leadership - Establishing governance, managing risk, and meeting regulatory requirements
• Business Readiness & AI Transformation - Assessing organizational readiness and driving pilots to enterprise scale

How to Prepare

Everything you need is on AWS Skill Builder:

• Start with the AI Business Strategist digital courses (13 modules mapped to the four exam domains)
• Follow the Certification Exam Prep Plan to identify gaps
• Practice with the Official Practice Question Set and Walk-through Questions

Sep 1, 2026

Beta registration opens (English & Japanese)

Sep 29, 2026

Beta exam delivery begins

Feb 15, 2027

Early Adopter badge deadline

▸ Exam Prep Plan on Skill Builder

ML Engineer - Associate (MLA-C02)

Beta registration open now

Updated for GenAI, Agentic AI & Foundation Models

The ML Engineer role has evolved beyond building and deploying traditional models. The updated MLA-C02 exam now covers generative AI solutions, agentic AI workflows, foundation model/LLM operationalization, and expanded Amazon Bedrock & SageMaker AI coverage alongside traditional ML engineering.

Key additions:

• Generative AI implementation & RAG architectures
• Agentic AI orchestration & complex workflows
• Foundation model selection, fine-tuning & deployment
• Expanded Amazon Bedrock capabilities
• Updated responsible AI practices for ML & GenAI

Sep 1, 2026

Beta registration opens (English)

Sep 28, 2026

Last day to take MLA-C01 (English)

Sep 29, 2026

Beta delivery begins

Jan 14, 2027

GA delivery begins (all languages); MLA-C01 retired

◆ Decision point: If already prepared, take MLA-C01 by Sep 28. Otherwise, register for the beta to validate both traditional ML and GenAI skills.

▸ Exam Prep Plan on Skill Builder

Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C03)

Coming October 2026

Expanded for GenAI, Resilience & Cloud-Native Patterns

Today's architects do more than design highly available systems - they integrate GenAI and agentic architectures, post-quantum cryptography, resilience-as-a-service patterns, and DevSecOps automation into every layer. SAP-C03 reflects this evolution with 27+ new skills across five domains.

Key additions:

• 11 new GenAI/Agentic AI skills - Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, RAG, Guardrails, human-oversight workflows
• Resilience engineering - Fault Injection Service, Resilience Hub, Application Recovery Controller
• 7 new cloud-native skills - Serverless data pipelines, VPC Lattice, multi-tenant architectures
• 6 new DevSecOps skills - Pipeline vulnerability scanning, container monitoring, AI/ML metrics
• Post-quantum cryptography - AWS KMS with ML-DSA and ML-KEM

Oct 27, 2026

Registration opens (all languages)

Nov 16, 2026

Last day to take SAP-C02

Nov 17, 2026

SAP-C03 GA delivery begins

▸ Read the full blog post for more details

Developer - Associate (DVA-C03)

Coming October 2026

AI-Assisted Development & Modern Security Practices

AI-assisted development is now a core competency. The updated DVA-C03 exam validates developers who use AI tools to generate, review, and optimize code, integrate managed AI services, and secure AI agent interactions - alongside traditional cloud development skills.

Key additions:

• New AI Security task (5 skills) - Access management for AI services, prompt injection protection, AI agent interaction security
• AI-assisted development across all domains - Code generation, automated review, test automation, deployment approvals, error analysis
• Container management - Amazon ECR, ECS, EKS, Fargate
• New in-scope services - Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon Q, Kiro, Data Firehose, PrivateLink

Oct 27, 2026

Registration opens (all languages)

Nov 30, 2026

Last day to take DVA-C02

Dec 1, 2026

DVA-C03 GA delivery begins

▸ Read the full blog post for more details

At-a-Glance: Key Dates

Certification

Status

Register

Delivery Starts

Price

AI Business Strategist

Beta

Now

Sep 29, 2026

$50

ML Engineer - Associate (MLA-C02)

Beta

Now

Sep 29, 2026

$75

Solutions Architect - Pro (SAP-C03)

Coming

Oct 27

Nov 17, 2026

$300

Developer - Associate (DVA-C03)

Coming

Oct 27

Dec 1, 2026

$150