CGOA study guide
CGOA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Certified GitOps Associate (CGOA) is a Linux Foundation certification that verifies a candidate's grasp of GitOps principles, terminology, and best practices for setting up a GitOps-managed software system. It is aimed at DevOps engineers and team members, platform and software engineers, CI/CD practitioners, and others who build internal developer platforms with GitOps built in. The exam is an online, proctored, multiple-choice test lasting 90 minutes, delivered at beginner experience level, with no prerequisites. Its published domains and weights are GitOps Terminology (20%), GitOps Principles (30%), Related Practices (16%), GitOps Patterns (20%), and Tooling (14%). The CGOA study guide has 5 sections and about 1,976 words.
01GitOps Terminology
The GitOps Terminology domain checks that you can use the vocabulary of GitOps precisely: the terms that describe state, reconciliation loops, and the relationship between Git and a running system. Exam questions often test whether you can tell a definition from a nearby but wrong idea, such as confusing continuous integration with reconciliation.
425 words, about 2 min02GitOps Principles
The GitOps Principles domain tests the four normative principles that define GitOps, and whether you can apply them to a scenario rather than merely recite them. The exam favors questions that ask which principle a practice violates.
378 words, about 2 min03Related Practices
The Related Practices domain tests how GitOps fits with adjacent disciplines: Infrastructure as Code, Configuration as Code, CI/CD, DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering. Questions often ask which practice adds continuous reconciliation and which does not.
410 words, about 2 min04GitOps Patterns
The GitOps Patterns domain tests the recurring repository and deployment structures used to apply GitOps at scale. The exam asks you to choose a pattern for a scenario and to recognize its tradeoffs.
377 words, about 2 min05Tooling
The Tooling domain tests your ability to place tools in the GitOps stack and distinguish a reconciler from a packaging, templating, policy, or secrets tool. Exam questions often name a tool and ask which role it plays.
386 words, about 2 min