dbt Architect Certification Preparation Details
The dbt Architect Certification Exam validates your ability to design secure, scalable dbt implementations, covering environments, jobs, security, Mesh, and Catalog. Use this dbt Architect Certification study guide to find official documentation for every exam objective. You can also explore more dbt certification study guides on the dbt labs category page to keep building your skills.
dbt Architect Certification Materials
Topic 1: Configuring dbt data warehouse connections
Understanding how to connect the warehouse
About data platform connections
Configuring IP whitelist
Access, Regions, & IP addresses
About data platform connections
Configuring public IP restrictions
I’m receiving a 403 error ‘Forbidden: Access denied’ when using service tokens
Creating and testing a connection for the project
About data platform connections
Quickstart for dbt and Snowflake
Quickstart for dbt and BigQuery
Quickstart for dbt and Databricks
Quickstart for dbt and Redshift
dbt platform configuration checklist
Authenticating through OAuth to access the data in dbt
Set up external OAuth with Snowflake
Set up external OAuth with Redshift
Adding Client ID and Secret for OAuth
Reconnecting to Snowflake OAuth after authentication expires
Why does the BigQuery OAuth application require scopes to Google Drive?
Topic 2: Configuring dbt git connections
Connecting the git repo to dbt
Connect with managed repository
Setting up integrations with git providers
Authenticate with Azure DevOps
About continuous integration (CI) in dbt
Topic 3: Creating and maintaining dbt environments
Understanding access control to different environments
About environment-level permissions
Set up environment-level permissions
Determining when to use a service account
Account-scoped personal access tokens
Why would I want to impersonate a service account?
Rotating key pair authentication via the API
Account-scoped personal access tokens
Understanding environment variables
Can I use environment variables in my profile?
Creating a new dbt deployment environment
Get started with Continuous Integration tests
Can I set a different connection at the environment level?
Setting a default schema/dataset for environments
How did dbt choose which schema to build my models in?
Customize dbt models database, schema, and alias
Understanding custom branches and how to configure them to environments
How do I use the ‘Custom Branch’ settings in a dbt Environment?
Branches when changing Git providers or repositories
Configuring dbt to allow deferral to other environments
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
Topic 4: Creating and maintaining job definitions
Set up a CI job with deferral
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
About continuous integration (CI) in dbt
Get started with Continuous Integration tests
Customizing CI/CD with custom pipelines
Understanding steps within a dbt job
Scheduling a job to run on schedule
Integrate with other orchestration tools
Implementing run commands in the correct order
Creating a new dbt job
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
Configuring optional settings such as environment variable overrides, threads, deferral, target name, and dbt version override
Upgrade versions in dbt platform
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
Generating documentation on a job that populates the dbt Catalog page
Build and view your docs with dbt
Configuring jobs to be triggered after other dbt jobs (job chaining)
Configuring Advanced CI
About continuous integration (CI) in dbt
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
Get started with Continuous Integration tests
Configuring self-deferral
Understanding when to use which type of job deferral
Continuous integration jobs in dbt
Topic 5: Configuring dbt security and licenses
Creating service tokens for API access
Account-scoped personal access tokens
I’m receiving a 403 error ‘Forbidden: Access denied’ when using service tokens
Assigning permission sets
Self-service Starter account permissions
About environment-level permissions
Set up environment-level permissions
Creating license mappings
How do I change a user license type to read-only in dbt?
Adding and removing users
How do I delete a user in dbt?
Where can I find SCIM FAQs and troubleshooting?
Adding SSO application for dbt Enterprise
Set up SSO with Google Workspace
Set up SSO with Microsoft Entra ID
Where can I find SSO FAQs and troubleshooting?
Creating and assigning RBAC
About environment-level permissions
Set up environment-level permissions
Topic 6: Setting up monitoring and alerting for jobs
Setting up email notifications
What happens if one of my runs fails?
Using Webhooks for event-driven integrations with other systems
Post to Slack with error context when a job fails
Trigger PagerDuty alarms when dbt jobs fail
Post to Microsoft Teams when a job finishes
Create Datadog events from dbt results
Refresh a Mode dashboard when a job completes
Refresh Tableau workbook with extracts after a job finishes
Topic 7: Setting up a dbt mesh and leveraging cross-project references
Setting up additional dbt projects
Deciding how to structure your dbt Mesh
Understanding how environment types relate to cross-project references
Utilizing model governance
Topic 8: Configuring and using dbt Catalog
Using dbt Catalog to understand the current lineage, troubleshoot issues and optimise cost and performance
Using dbt Catalog to find public models and cross-project references
Wrapping Up dbt Architect Certification
This dbt Architect Certification study guide covered all eight exam topics, from warehouse and git connections to environments, jobs, security, monitoring, Mesh, and Catalog, with official documentation for each objective. Keep practicing in a real dbt account, and good luck with your exam. You can also explore more dbt certification study guides on the dbt category page to keep building your skills. Have a question or tip? Leave a comment below.
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