How to Become a Xamarin Certified Professional Developer

Jordan Hohepa, 03 November 2017

Recently, I was fortunate enough to become a Xamarin Certified Mobile Developer by completing online courses and passing online exams via Xamarin University. At the time of writing this blog Xamarin University offers two certification pathways of ‘Xamarin Certified Mobile Professional’ and ‘Xamarin Certified Mobile Developer’. This blog will be an overview of the Professional certification pathway, which is also a pre-requisite for attempting to obtain the Mobile certification. The Xamarin Certifications aren’t set in stone, so the contents of the certification pathways described in this blog may no longer be as accurate.

The screenshot above shows the courses required for the Professional Certification pathway. As you can see, almost half of these courses are at the introductory level. This is because the first certification is partial certification, which is used to prove that you understand the core concepts around mobile development with Xamarin. There are a few non-introductory level courses which deal with REST services and SQLite so the first certification isn’t exactly a walk in the park. While going through the courses you are given the option to complete the courses by yourself (self-guided) or attend a live streamed lecture. I mainly completed the self-guided courses and found the course materials to be quite straightforward with the lab exercises being quite simple at this point. The few streamed lectures I attended were also good, with the lecturers regularly probing the class for questions. Personally, I did not find the courses too difficult to complete and the flash quizzes provided gave a good idea on the types of questions the exam would ask. With not much experience in mobile development, I personally found that the platform specific courses were the most difficult to study for.

The exam itself is two hours long with 100 questions in total and with a passing mark of 80%. Although 80% is a fairly intimidating goal to meet, the bulk of the questions asked you are simple if you had payed attention during courses. Throughout the exam I found that my question pool had weighed mainly towards iOS and Android specific questions. It is important to note that there is a 14 day wait period if you fail an exam attempt before you can retake. After passing the exam your Xamarin profile will show the below badge and you can then progress towards a Developer Certification by completing the next set of courses.