End-to-End Data Engineering

Core Python Programming

• Data types, Variables, I/O
• Functions, Scoping, Lambda, Map/Filter
• Control Structures, Loops
• Exception Handling & Logging

Data Structures

• Lists, Tuples, Dictionaries, Sets
• Comprehensions and Generators

Working with Files & APIs

• Reading and writing text, CSV, JSON, Parquet
• Consuming REST APIs using requests
• Working with environment variables & config files

Essential Libraries

• NumPy: arrays, slicing, broadcasting, vectorized operations
• Pandas: Series, DataFrames, indexing, grouping, pivoting, reshaping

Basics

• SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, DISTINCT, LIMIT, ALIAS

Intermediate SQL

• JOINs (INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, FULL)
• GROUP BY, HAVING
• Subqueries, CTEs

Advanced SQL

• Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD)
• Aggregations, Nested queries, Date/Time functions
• Query optimization basics (indexes, execution plans)

Practice

• Real-world datasets (Sales, HR, E-commerce)

Data Modeling Fundamentals

• OLTP vs OLAP, Normalization vs Denormalization
• Star Schema, Snowflake Schema
• Fact tables vs Dimension tables
• Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD Types 1/2)

Cloud Data Warehouses

• Snowflake basics: architecture, virtual warehouses, loading data
• BigQuery basics: datasets, partitioning, clustering
• Redshift basics (overview & comparison)

File Formats & Storage

• CSV, JSON, Parquet, Avro, ORC
• Delta Lake format (bridges into Databricks module)
• Partitioning strategies

ETL vs ELT Concepts

• Batch vs streaming ingestion
• Idempotency, incremental loads, backfills

Data Cleaning & Transformation

• Handling missing values, duplicates, outliers at scale
• Schema validation and enforcement
• Data quality checks (Great Expectations basics)

dbt (Data Build Tool)

• Models, sources, seeds
• Materializations (view, table, incremental)
• Tests and documentation
• dbt + warehouse workflow (Snowflake/BigQuery)

Airflow Fundamentals

• Architecture: Scheduler, Webserver, Executor, Metadata DB
• DAGs, Tasks, Operators
• Installing and running Airflow locally / with Docker

Building Pipelines

• PythonOperator, BashOperator, and provider operators
• Task dependencies, branching, trigger rules
• Sensors, hooks, and XComs for passing data

Scheduling & Orchestration

• Scheduling intervals, backfills, catchup
• Retries, SLAs, alerting (email/Slack)
• Dynamic DAG generation

Airflow in Practice

• Connecting Airflow to databases, APIs, and cloud storage
• Orchestrating a full ETL pipeline end-to-end
• Airflow with Databricks and Spark jobs
• Monitoring, logging, and debugging DAGs
• Deploying Airflow (Docker Compose, Astronomer, managed services)

PySpark Basics

• Setting up SparkSession, RDDs vs DataFrames

DataFrame API

• Read/Write CSV, JSON, Parquet
• Filter, Select, GroupBy, Join
• Partitioning and performance tuning basics

PySpark SQL & Streaming

• Creating temporary views and writing SQL queries on Spark DataFrames
• Structured Streaming basics: Reading from Kafka, writing to sinks

• Aligned to Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate. Covers Lakeflow, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog.

Exam domain weighting

• Databricks Intelligence Platform — 6%
• Data Ingestion and Loading — 21%
• Data Transformation and Modeling — 22%
• Working with Lakeflow Jobs — 16%
• Implementing CI/CD — 10%
• Troubleshooting, Monitoring & Optimization — 10%
• Governance and Security — 15%

Databricks Intelligence Platform

• Lakehouse architecture (Delta/Parquet)
• Workspace components (Notebooks, Repos, Clusters, Jobs, DBFS/Volumes)
• Compute types (All-Purpose, Job Clusters, SQL Warehouses, Serverless)

Data Ingestion and Loading

• Auto Loader (incremental ingestion, schema inference/evolution)
• COPY INTO (SQL-based batch loading)
• Lakeflow Connect & Structured Streaming fundamentals
• Relational entities & Unity Catalog namespace

Data Transformation and Modeling

• Delta Lake internals (ACID, transaction log, time travel)
• MERGE INTO, SCDs, Schema enforcement vs evolution
• Performance optimizations (OPTIMIZE, ZORDER BY, Liquid Clustering, VACUUM)
• Medallion architecture (Bronze → Silver → Gold)
• ELT with Spark SQL and Python

Working with Lakeflow Jobs

• Lakeflow Jobs (DAG-based orchestration)
• Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines (formerly DLT)
• Data quality Expectations & AUTO CDC

Implementing CI/CD

• Databricks Repos / Git Folders
• Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) & Databricks CLI
• Typical flow: Git → PR tests → Staging → Prod

Troubleshooting, Monitoring & Optimization

• Reading the Spark UI (stages, tasks, skew, spill)
• Cluster/job event logs
• Common fixes (compaction, salting, AQE, broadcast joins)

Governance and Security (Unity Catalog)

• Three-level namespace (catalog.schema.table)
• Centralized access control (GRANT/REVOKE)
• Data lineage, Volumes, and Audit logging

Databricks + Airflow Integration

• Triggering Lakeflow Jobs/pipelines from Airflow
• End-to-end lakehouse pipeline orchestration

• Messaging system concepts (Kafka basics: topics, producers, consumers)
• Batch vs real-time architectures
• Simple streaming pipeline: Kafka → Spark Structured Streaming → Delta table

Git & GitHub

• Version control basics for data pipelines, Branching strategy

Docker

• Containerizing pipelines and jobs, Docker Compose for local setups

CI/CD Basics

• GitHub Actions for testing/deploying, Automated testing (pytest, dbt tests)

Cloud Fundamentals (Overview)

• AWS (S3, IAM), GCP (Cloud Storage, BigQuery), Azure (Data Lake)
• When to use managed services vs self-hosted tools

Beginner Level

• Batch ETL Pipeline: Extract from API/CSV → clean with Pandas → load into SQL database
• SQL-based sales/HR data analysis with automated reporting

Intermediate Level

• End-to-End Airflow Pipeline: Ingest → transform → load into cloud warehouse (Snowflake/BigQuery)
• dbt-based transformation layer on top of a warehouse, orchestrated by Airflow

Advanced Level

• Lakehouse Pipeline: Airflow + Databricks + Delta Lake, orchestrating multi-stage transformations
• Real-time Pipeline: Kafka + Spark Structured Streaming + Delta table, monitored via Airflow
• Fully Containerized Pipeline: CI/CD (Docker + GitHub Actions) deploying to cloud warehouse