ICT-Platform Dev Specialist FA study guide
ICT-Platform Dev Specialist FA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ICT-Platform Dev Specialist FA is a multiple-choice certification aimed at developers who build and operate shared application platforms rather than single-purpose apps. It suits engineers who already write code and now need to reason about the platform layer: service architecture, data storage choices, API contracts, deployment pipelines, identity and access, and the observability that keeps a platform trustworthy. The ICT-Platform Dev Specialist FA study guide has 8 sections and about 3,210 words.
01Platform Architecture and System Design
Platform Architecture and System Design checks whether you can choose a structural style, justify it with availability and coupling arguments, and predict where a design breaks under partial outage. Questions are scenario-based: given constraints on RTO, traffic shape, and team topology, select the decomposition and the integration style.
417 words, about 2 min02Application Development and Programming
Application Development and Programming tests whether your code survives production: concurrency, failure handling, configuration, and runtime resource limits. Expect questions on retries, idempotency, graceful shutdown, and why a green unit test still fails at 3 a.m.
403 words, about 2 min03Data Modeling, Storage, and Database Management
Data Modeling, Storage, and Database Management covers how you shape data, choose storage engines, and keep queries fast as volume grows. The exam tests schema design, index reasoning, transaction isolation, and the operational side: migrations, partitioning, and backups.
409 words, about 2 min04API Design, Integration, and Interoperability
API Design, Integration, and Interoperability tests whether you can define contracts other teams can depend on: HTTP semantics, versioning that does not break consumers, pagination, rate limits, and event schemas that evolve safely. Resources are nouns; methods carry the verb.
389 words, about 2 min05Cloud, Infrastructure, and Deployment Operations
Cloud, Infrastructure, and Deployment Operations tests the mechanics of shipping: infrastructure as code, environment parity, release strategy, autoscaling, and the characteristic failure of each. Declare desired state and let the tool compute the diff.
402 words, about 2 min06Security, Identity, and Access Control
Security, Identity, and Access Control covers authentication, authorization, secret handling, and tenant isolation. The exam asks you to choose a flow, scope a token, and explain why a shortcut fails under attack.
397 words, about 2 min07Performance, Reliability, and Monitoring
Performance, Reliability, and Monitoring tests whether you can define what "working" means numerically and detect drift before users report it. An SLI is a measured ratio: proportion of requests served in under 300 ms without a 5xx, measured at the edge or client.
381 words, about 2 min08Development Lifecycle, Testing, and Governance
Development Lifecycle, Testing, and Governance tests how changes reach production safely and provably: pipelines, test strategy, review, supply chain, and the audit evidence platform consumers and regulators expect. Trunk-based development with branches under a day reduces merge risk; feature flags hide incomplete work instead of long-lived branches.
412 words, about 2 min