There have been some in the community talking about new GitHub Certifications that are currently in a private beta available to Microsoft Partners (and maybe Microsoft employees too) that are let into this early program. I’ve been wondering for some time as to when GitHub would start offering certifications around their platform and tools. So, I would say, “It’s about time we get GitHub certifications!” It looks like there are three GitHub Certifications (Actions, Administration, Advanced Security) but they are only available to Microsoft Partners for now!

Now, let’s take a look at the new GitHub Certifications that are currently in beta, and should be coming soon!

FYI, this is not an official announcement, but the gathering of some community information. Hopefully, we’ll see some more official information about these GitHub certifications from either Microsoft or GitHub soon. I’ll post an update when we get more information. For now, please read ahead.

What are the new GitHub Certifications?

I recently saw a blog post from Kevin Chant mentioning how he has recently earned the new GitHub Actions and GitHub Admin certifications through the Microsoft Partner he works for. Congrats, Kevin! He give a short intro to the exams and a link to the Microsoft Partner site to read more information. Unfortunately, the downloadable document link covering the GitHub Certifications for Azure Partners on the Microsoft site doesn’t seem to be available anymore. I’m not sure why, but I did some online searching and was able to find a little more information about the new GitHub certifications that are in the works. Let’s take a look at what I found out.

There appears to be three new GitHub Certifications for Azure Partners:

• GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Actions (credly badge)
• GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Administration (credly badge)
• GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Advanced Security (credly badge)

At this time, from what I could gather these new GitHub Certifications are available to only Microsoft Partners (and Microsoft employees maybe?) who request access and are invited to take the beta certifications. It also appears that there are some people that have already taken the beta exams and have even earned the certifications. Since there are people that have already earned the certifications, then I would imagine we will see more broad availability of the GitHub Certifications coming soon, hopefully. Although, I haven’t seen any information as to whether these GitHub Certifications will be publicly available for anyone to earn, or if they will solely be available for Microsoft Partners looking to earn partner competencies. I’m hoping it ends up being the former so we can all have a change to become GitHub Certified!

https://twitter.com/TechTrainerTim/status/1537857003544002560

Here’s a LinkedIn post form Michael Lee announcing that he has earned all three GitHub Certifications. Congrats, Michael!

GitHub Certification Exam Objective Domains

Through the searching I did, I was able to come up with some information that will help us peek into what the exam objective domains will be tested for each of the GitHub Certification exams. Keep in mind this is information I was able to gather from other people posting about the certifications. I’ll post an update when more information is available.

The following is a look at the exam objective domains that I was able to find for these three new GitHub Certifications. Each of the objective domains have a percentage on them too that indicates how much of the exam questions will be dedicated to that domain. This lets you know how much focus is on each objective domain area on the exams.

GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Actions

• Author and maintain workflows (40%)
• Consume workflows (20%)
• Author and maintain actions (25%)
• Manage GitHub Actions for the enterprise (15%)

GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Administration

• Support GitHub Enterprise for users and key stakeholders (15%)
• Manage user identities and GitHub authentication (20%)
• Describe how GitHub is deployed, distributed, and licensed (5%)
• Manage access and permissions based on membership (20%)
• Enable secure software development and ensure compliance (15%)
• Manage GitHub Actions (20%)
• Manage GitHub Packages (5%)

GitHub Certified Partner: GitHub Advanced Security

• Describe the GitHub Advanced Security features and functionality (10%)
• Configure and use secret scanning (10%)
• Configure and use dependency management (15%)
• Configure and use code scanning (15%)
• Use code scanning with CodeQL (20%)
• Describe GitHub Advanced Security best practices, results, and how to take corrective measures (18%)
• Configure GitHub Advanced Security tools in GitHub Enterprise (12%)

If you’re looking to earn a DevOps certification from Microsoft, there is the Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Expert certification that is publicly available for anyone to pass the required exams and earn. Until these GitHub Certifications become available to the general public, the Azure DevOps Expert certification will be the only DevOps / SRE focused certification offered by Microsoft.

On related note, all the way back in 2018, I was involved with a training company that was partnering with GitHub to offer GitHub Certified training courses and I went through a training with an internal GitHub trainer to become a GitHub Certified Trainer myself. I’m really not sure how many GitHub Certified Trainers there are in the world. As far as I know, the GitHub Certified Trainer was the only certification that GitHub has offered in the past, but even that wasn’t offered to the general public, it was just something they did with their partners who were offering GitHub training. To be clear, the GitHub Certified Trainer certification that I mention is NOT a part of the new GitHub certifications that are coming, and I don’t even know if it’s something they still do. I do have to admin that the GitHub Certified Trainer certification was a pretty deep dive into how to use Git and GitHub tools.

GitHub Certification Training

It looks like GitHub has already authored and published a lot of training content over on MS Learn for these certifications. You could always read through the GitHub documentation or use other sources for learning and training. However, with official learning content published to the MS Learn site, you may have a more guided learning path geared towards learning what you need to pass these certification exams.

Here are the learning paths / collections for the GitHub Certifications on MS Learn:

• GitHub Actions Certification Training: MS Learn Learning Path: Automate your workflow with GitHub Actions
• GitHub Administrator Certification Training: MS Learn Collection: GitHub Administration
• GitHub Advanced Security training: MS Learn Collection: GitHub Advanced Security

Happy learning GitHub and good luck on earning these certifications if you are lucky enough to be included in the GitHub Certification exam beta program!