I recently started working as an Azure engineer and am getting plenty of hands-on guidance from senior engineers. Before this role, most of my experience was with AWS and Google Cloud, using tools like Jenkins and GitHub Actions for deployments. My current job involves a lot of Azure DevOps, which is new to me. Would earning the AZ-400 certification be worthwhile, or is the on-the-job training and practical experience likely to be more valuable?
4 Answers
It can be useful if you have the time and the cost is reasonable. Certification study often covers areas that day-to-day deployment work does not, so it can expose you to features and practices your team may not use regularly. It also gives you a quick résumé signal if you later move to a company without strong senior support.
Certifications are especially valuable when a job or contract explicitly requires one. Government and highly regulated environments may require specific credentials for access to certain systems, regardless of how experienced someone is. Outside those cases, demonstrated engineering ability and the ability to explain your work usually matter more than AZ-400 by itself.
Treat it as optional rather than essential. Focus first on becoming effective with the tools your team actually uses, then decide whether the exam is a good way to organize and validate your learning. Practical examples of designing pipelines, managing releases, improving reliability, and troubleshooting will usually carry more weight than the certificate alone.
If you already have solid experience with AWS, GCP, Jenkins, and GitHub Actions, your existing engineering background may be more valuable to employers than another certification. Azure DevOps can be listed as professional experience once you have used it in real projects. You could still study the AZ-400 material to fill knowledge gaps, but taking the exam may not add much unless you need the credential for a specific role.
The value depends heavily on your employer. Some companies that partner with Microsoft need a certain number of certified employees to maintain partner benefits, so the credential can matter more in that situation.