| Section | Weight | Objectives |
| Software Development and Design | 20% | - Design patterns (MVC, Observer, Factory, Singleton) - Distributed applications related to the concepts of front-end, back-end, and load balancing - Application design considering latency and rate limiting - Application design and implementation considering observability - Architectural patterns (monolithic, services-oriented, microservices, event-driven, serverless) - Application design and implementation considering maintainability - Application design considering scalability and modularity - Application design considering high availability and resiliency - Basics of software testing - Diagnosing problems with application design - Use of version control (Git)
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| Infrastructure and Automation | 20% | - Basics of Linux and networking (IP addressing, routing, DNS, NTP) - Model-driven programmability (YANG, NETCONF, RESTCONF) - Source code review and code quality assurance - Usage of JSON and YAML for data serialization - Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts - Network automation concepts (Ansible, Puppet, Terraform)
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| Cisco Platforms | 20% | - API capabilities of Cisco Meraki - Capabilities of Cisco Nexus platforms - Capabilities of Cisco collaboration platforms (Webex Teams) - Capabilities of Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) - Capabilities of Cisco security platforms (Firepower, ISE) - Capabilities of Cisco MGMT platforms (vManage, DNA Center, Intersight) - API capabilities of Cisco AppDynamics
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| Application Deployment and Security | 20% | - Application deployment models (on-premises, hybrid, cloud, edge) - OWASP top 10 security risks - Encryption techniques (data in transit, data at rest) - Components of a CI/CD pipeline (build, test, deploy) - Container concepts (Docker, Kubernetes) - Secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk) - Benefits of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) - Device authentication and authorization (OAuth2, API keys, tokens)
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| Using APIs | 20% | - Usage of software development kits (SDKs) - API authentication/authorization methods (basic auth, OAuth, API keys, tokens) - Common HTTP response codes associated with REST APIs - Pagination and rate-limiting concepts - Synchronous and asynchronous API calls - API styles/protocols (REST, RPC, gRPC, GraphQL, webhook) - Error handling - JSON/YAML data formats
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