Hootix Academy

Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional Certification

Design, deploy and operate containerized applications on Kubernetes

Key facts

About the Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional certification

The Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional certification validates that you can build, ship and operate containerized applications on Kubernetes against real production constraints. It is grounded in the CNCF definition of cloud-native — containers, microservices, immutable infrastructure and declarative APIs — and the twelve-factor app methodology. You will work across the full stack: container fundamentals (Docker images and layers, registries, the OCI runtime and image specs), Kubernetes architecture (the control plane — API server, etcd, scheduler, controller manager — and the node components — kubelet, kube-proxy and the container runtime), and the core objects that model workloads (Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, Services, Ingress, ConfigMaps, Secrets and Namespaces). The exam goes deep on workload controllers (StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs), scheduling (resource requests/limits, node selectors, affinity/anti-affinity, taints and tolerations), cluster networking (the CNI model, Service types, Ingress controllers, NetworkPolicies and a service-mesh introduction), storage (volumes, PersistentVolumes/PersistentVolumeClaims, StorageClasses and the CSI), configuration and secrets, autoscaling (HPA, VPA and the cluster autoscaler), health probes (liveness, readiness and startup), rolling updates and rollbacks, Helm packaging, observability (Prometheus, Grafana, metrics, logs), security (RBAC, Pod Security, image scanning, NetworkPolicy), GitOps (Argo CD and Flux reconciliation), and multi-cluster/multi-tenancy and troubleshooting. The exam includes YAML manifest and kubectl code-reading questions, so you must be able to read a manifest and predict cluster behaviour. It is distribution-agnostic: the concepts transfer across vanilla Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE and on-prem. Candidates should already hold the DevOps & CI/CD credential or have equivalent hands-on container experience.

What you will learn

The official Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional study course covers:

  1. Cloud-Native Foundations & Containers — What cloud-native means, the twelve-factor app, and how containers and images really work.
  2. Kubernetes Architecture — The control plane and node components, and the reconciliation loop that powers it all.
  3. Core Objects & Workloads — Pods, Deployments and Services, plus StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs and config.
  4. Scheduling, Networking & Storage — How Pods are placed, how traffic flows in and around the cluster, and how data persists.
  5. Scaling, Health & Rollouts — Autoscaling, probes, rolling updates and rollbacks, and packaging with Helm.
  6. Observability, Security & GitOps — Metrics/logs/traces, RBAC and Pod security, and the GitOps reconcile model.

Prerequisites

Frequently asked questions

Is the Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional certificate verifiable?
Yes. Every issued Hootix Academy certificate carries a unique credential code that anyone can verify online.
How is the Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional exam structured?
It is a 140-minute proctored multiple-choice exam of 95 questions; you need 75% to pass.
Do I need to buy the course to take the exam?
You can purchase the certification exam on its own, or bundle it with the full study course at a reduced price.
How long does the Cloud-Native & Kubernetes Professional course take?
About 32 hours of self-paced study.

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