BC Skills Academy

Big Data & Streaming

Design and operate real-time data pipelines at scale

Key facts

About the Big Data & Streaming certification

The Big Data & Streaming certification validates that you can design, reason about and operate real-time and large-scale data systems. You will move beyond batch thinking into the world of unbounded data, where records arrive continuously and correctness depends on when you process them, not just what you process. The exam covers the big-data 5 Vs, distributed storage (HDFS and object storage) and distributed-computing fundamentals; Apache Kafka in depth — topics, partitions, offsets, consumer groups, replication, retention, log compaction and exactly-once semantics; stream processing with Spark Structured Streaming and Apache Flink; event time vs processing time, windowing (tumbling, sliding, session), watermarks and late-data handling, stateful processing and checkpointing; delivery guarantees (at-most-once, at-least-once, exactly-once); the lambda and kappa architectures; change-data-capture streaming, backpressure, message queues vs event streams, the streaming lakehouse (Delta/Iceberg), real-time OLAP stores (Druid/ClickHouse), and the scalability, fault-tolerance and monitoring of streaming pipelines. It is engine-agnostic: the concepts transfer across Kafka, Flink, Spark, Pulsar and managed cloud equivalents. Candidates should already hold the Data Engineering Professional credential or have equivalent hands-on pipeline experience.

Course outline

The Big Data & Streaming — Study Guide course covers:

  1. Big Data Foundations — The 5 Vs, distributed storage (HDFS and object storage) and the move-compute-to-data principle. (3 lessons)
  2. Apache Kafka In Depth — Topics, partitions, offsets, consumer groups, replication, retention and log compaction. (3 lessons)
  3. Stream Processing & Time — Spark vs Flink, event time vs processing time, windowing and watermarks for late data. (3 lessons)
  4. State, Guarantees & Fault Tolerance — Stateful processing, checkpointing/recovery and delivery semantics (at-most/at-least/exactly-once). (3 lessons)
  5. Architectures, Analytics & Operations — Lambda vs kappa, CDC, backpressure, the streaming lakehouse, real-time OLAP and monitoring. (3 lessons)

Prerequisites

Frequently asked questions

Is the Big Data & Streaming certificate verifiable?
Yes. Every certificate issued by BC Skills Academy carries a unique credential ID that anyone can check on the public verification page.
How is the Big Data & Streaming exam structured?
It is a timed, randomized multiple-choice exam of 62 questions in 85 minutes, graded instantly; you need 75% to pass.
Can I get a refund?
Full refund within 7 days of purchase if you have not started the exam. Once the exam has been started or completed, the purchase is no longer refundable.

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