Exams Vouchers: Red Hat Certified Advanced Developer in Cloud-native Applications (EX288)

The Red Hat Certified Advanced Developer in Cloud-native Applications exam (EX288) tests your ability to deploy existing applications in a Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform environment.

By passing this exam, you become a Red Hat Certified Advanced Developer in Cloud-native Applications, which also counts toward becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect in Cloud-native Applications.

This exam is based on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.18.

Updated 09/06/2026

Audience for this exam

• Application developers who are responsible for implementing and supporting applications in the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
• DevOps engineers who are responsible for delivering applications in the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
• Site reliability engineers working with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Preparation

Red Hat encourages you to consider taking Red Hat OpenShift Development I: Introduction to Containers with Podman and Red Hat OpenShift Developer II: Building Kubernetes Applications to help prepare.  Attendance in these classes is not required; students can choose to take just the exam.

While attending Red Hat classes can be an important part of your preparation, attending class does not guarantee success on the exam. Previous experience, practice, and native aptitude are also important determinants of success.

Many books and other resources on system administration for Red Hat products are available. Red Hat does not endorse any of these materials as preparation guides for exams. Nevertheless, you may find additional reading helpful to deepen your understanding.

Recommended next exam or course

• Red Hat OpenShift Development II: Containerizing Applications (DO288)

Be sure to review the Red Hat Certification Program Guide to ensure you are familiar with all official policies and exam procedures before booking your session.

This exam consists of a single section lasting three hours.  The exam is a performance based evaluation of candidates' abilities to deploy applications in a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment.  Candidates perform a number of routine tasks associated with deploying applications similar to those they would be expected to perform in an OpenShift Container Platform DevOps environment and are evaluated on whether those applications meet specific objective criteria.

To help you prepare, the exam objectives highlight the task areas you can expect to see covered in the exam. Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove exam objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance. 

As part of this exam, you should be able to perform these tasks:

Work with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

• Create and work with multiple OpenShift projects
• Create and deploy single container and multi-container applications
• Use application health monitoring
• Understand basic Git usage and work with Git in the context of deploying applications in OpenShift
• Configure the OpenShift internal registry to meet specific requirements
• Manage applications with the web console

Deploy multi-container applications

• Create and use Helm charts
• Customizing deployments with Kustomize

Work with container images in OpenShift Container Platform

• Understand how to create container images based on pre-built images
• Understand and work with image builds and image build configurations
• Work with custom builder workflows to create images to use with OpenShift Container Platform
• Publish container images to a the OpenShift image registry

Troubleshoot application builds and deployment issues

• Diagnose and correct minor issues with application deployment
• Diagnose and correct minor issues with build process

Work with image streams

• Create custom image streams to deploy applications
• Pull applications from existing Git repositories
• Trigger updates on image stream changes
• Debug minor issues with application deployment

Work with configuration maps and secrets

• Create configuration maps
• Create secret resources
• Use configuration maps to inject data into applications

Work with the source-to-image (S2I) framework

• Build and deploy applications using S2I framework
• Customize existing S2I builder images

Work with build hooks and build triggers

• Create a build hook that runs a provided script
• Test and confirm proper operation of the hook
• Manage and trigger application builds

Work with templates

• Create an OpenShift template
• Use pre-existing templates written in either JSON or YAML format
• Work with multi-container templates
• Add custom parameters to a template

Work with OpenShift Pipelines

• Understanding CI/CD process inside of OpenShift
• Understand and work with standard Tekton custom resource definitions (CRDs) for defining CI/CD pipelines
• Design and define, and troubleshoot CI/CD workflows for applications
• Configure and trigger Pipeline workflows for applications

Work with Operators accessible for users to run in their applications

• Creating applications from installed Operators

During the exam you may be required to work with one or more pre-written applications. You will not be required to modify application code however in some cases you may need to utilize supplied documentation in order to fully test and complete the deployment of a given application.

• Prior to taking this exam, you should possess a basic understanding of container technology.  Some programming experience is recommended but not required.
• Completion of Red Hat OpenShift Developer II: Building Kubernetes Applications (DO288) is strongly encouraged but not required.
• Earning the Red Hat Certified Developer in Cloud-native Applications credential is strongly encouraged but not required.