Cloud certifications: Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-100)

This guide provides information and resources to prepare for the Microsoft Certification Azure AI Engineer Associate. It also gives you some tips and recommendations based on the experiences of engineers who are certified in Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft's certifications are classified by a number of stars:

• One star for a Fundamentals certification
• Two stars for an Associate certification
• Three stars for an Expert certification

By obtaining this certification, you will earn a two-star Microsoft Azure Associate certification.

This certification is for data scientists, data engineers, IoT specialists, and AI developers who implement artificial intelligence solutions on Azure.

If you are a data specialist with an understanding of the components that make up the Azure AI portfolio, this certification is perfect for you.

There is only one required exam, AI-100: Designing and Implementing an Azure AI Solution, to earn the Azure AI Engineer Associate certification.

As with all Microsoft exams, you will have between 40 and 50 questions (possibly including a few use cases to study), and the passing score is 700 over 1000. Assuming that all questions have the same weight, about 35 of the 50 questions need to be answered correctly.

The exam is available in English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean. Its length is 210 minutes.

A significant experience (between one and two years) in building and deploying AI solutions on Azure is recommended in order to best understand all the skills assessed during the exam. Candidates should be familiar with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service. Candidates should also be able to recommend solutions that use open source technologies.

The AI-100 exam measures candidates' ability to accomplish the following tasks :

• Analyze solution requirements (25-30%)
  • Recommend Cognitive Services APIs to meet business requirements
  • Map security requirements of tools, technologies, and processes
  • Select the software, services, and storage required to support a solution
• Design AI solutions (40-45%)
  • Design solutions that include one or more pipelines
  • Design solutions that use Cognitive Services
  • Design solutions that implement the Bot Framework
  • Design the compute infrastructure to support a solution
  • Design for data governance, compliance, integrity, and security
• Implement and monitor AI solutions (25-30%)
  • Implement an AI workflow
  • Integrate AI services and solution components
  • Monitor and evaluate the AI environment

The exams change periodically, so these lists are not definitive or exhaustive.

Pluralsight offers relevant learning paths on Azure AI:

• Developing Microsoft Azure AI Solutions
• Designing Microsoft Azure AI Solutions
• Deploying and Managing Microsoft Azure AI Solutions

Some learning paths are also proposed by Microsoft to gain the skills needed to become certified:

• Free online training:

  • Evaluate text with Azure Cognitive Language Services
  • Create Intelligent Bots with the Azure Bot Service
  • Process and classify images with the Azure Cognitive Vision Services

• Microsoft Official Instructor-led training course:

  • Designing and Implementing an Azure AI Solution

According to Microsoft:

Upon earning a certification, 23% of Microsoft certified technologists reported receiving up to a 20% salary increase. What’s more, certified employees are often entrusted with supervising their peers—putting them on the fast track for a promotion. On average, certified employees earn 15% more than those without certification and are nearly 20% more productive.

According to Indeed, the average salary for a cloud engineer is US$120,000 per year in the United States.

This is an exciting time to get certified!

As you probably know, Microsoft certifications have been around for many years and are highly valued in the industry. Historically, they have taken place in approved and supervised examination centers, but for some time now it has also been possible to take them from home or the office with remote monitoring by a supervisor (you must be absolutely alone during the examination, have the webcam and microphone open at all times, no paper/pencil at your disposal, etc.). This option allows everyone to be able to take this exam regardless of health conditions, but in all cases, before you attend, make sure you are well prepared and able to check off all of the competencies that may be assessed during the exam.

This achievement requires a lot of effort on your part and you will have well deserved your badge!

I wish you all the best in your certification journey!