I recently sat down and made a big list of every IT certification I’ve earned (I have 25 of them over the past 9 years, yikes) so I could feed it into ChatGPT to create a set of visualizations. I wanted to save the visualizations somewhere, so hence this blog post. I’m not huge on self-promotion in my blog, but I’m biting the bullet and decided to post the following. I may update this blog post when I acquire new certificates as well, so this may change.
If you want to check out my list of certifications, I keep a separate page here listing them, or you can check out my LinkedIn Profile here. My certifications are mostly Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle certifications. I won’t list them here, but feel free to check out the page if you want to know the details. They are mostly database and cloud certifications, with a mix of Associate level and Fundamental/Foundational level.
I also have a big list of all the database certifications here, which has been one of my most popular posts. I searched all the various vendors and what certifications they offer and compiled a list. I tried to provide a link to the vendor’s certification page, but some may be outdated. Feel free to let me know of any that I have missed.
Now back to visualizing my big list of certifications… before diving in, let me explain how I’m defining things, because “certification” can mean a lot of different things depending on who you ask.
For this analysis, I’m only counting certifications earned through a proctored exam (one that’s either watched live or recorded) and that verifies your identity through some combination of a government-issued photo ID, facial recognition, and a proctor keeping an eye on things. That rules out the stuff you get from online courses like Coursera, DataCamp or LinkedIn.
I’m not 100% sure every exam on my list was proctored. A few Oracle certs I picked up during their 2025 “Race to Certification” event felt like they were not proctored, but I’m counting them as I went into the test with the illusion they were proctored.
Every vendor loves to invent their own words for difficulty levels, such as Advanced, Professional, Specialty, Associate, Fundamental, Leader, Foundational, etc. So, to keep things simple, I sorted everything into four buckets of my own. Trying to normalize my certifications into these buckets is subjective, but I went with what I felt best and left it at that.
- Professional – The heavy hitters. Usually, you need an Associate-level cert first just to sit for these. I don’t actually have any of these certifications.
- Associate – Exams that really test whether you know your stuff.
- Fundamental – A solid overview of a topic, but nowhere near as tough as Associate level.
- Foundational – Let’s just say… these are not going to stress you out.
I’m a big fan of certifications because they’re one of the best ways to keep up with the constant changes in technology and they give you an end goal where you receive a certification badge. Plus, I enjoy learning by taking multiple-choice practice exams, so taking the final exam is a nice way to have a finish line. But for everyone it is different. I could write a few more paragraphs here about what certifications were easiest, hardest, most beneficial, tips, tricks, etc. but I want to keep this post as short as possible.
Now, onto the fun part… the visualizations.
My favorite of the bunch is the cumulative graph.
Looking at it, 2018 really jumps out as a big year. That’s when I was hustling to ramp up my skillset with a bunch of Associate level certs. In 2017 I realized I needed to level up fast and get serious about learning cloud technologies and also validate my database skills.
The certifications per year chart backs this up too. You can really see that spike of Associate level exams I knocked out in 2018. My goal has to been to obtain a certification every year, which has now been nine years and counting. Thankfully a few of the Fundamental/Foundational exams have helped me achieve this (2020 and 2023).
Next up, let’s break things down by certification level.
The donut chart shows I’ve got a pretty even split between Associate level exams and Fundamental/Foundational ones. I’ve been racking up way more Fundamental and Foundational certs lately than Associate ones the past few years.
That tracks, honestly. Vendors have been churning out Fundamental/Foundational exams left and right, and I’ve more or less already picked up the Associate level certs that align with my actual skillset. So, my guess is that gap is only going to widen. I’d expect Fundamental and Foundational to keep pulling further ahead of Associate in the coming years.
How I’ve classified the exams is a bit subjective. Each vendor has their own classification descriptors, so I had to normalize them into the levels show on the chart. Ultimately, I went with what I felt was best with no real scientific approach to it.
Now let’s look at which certifications are active, expired, or retired.
Some exams expire after a set period, others don’t expire but get officially retired by the vendor, and then there’s my one weird case, the CIW Database Design Specialist. That exam got modified at some point, and CIW pulled my badge and any record that I’d ever passed it. Naturally, they never responded to my attempts to get it reinstated. I’m still counting it in my list anyway, and honestly, I plan on retaking it someday because it’s a genuinely fun exam, even though I’m not thrilled about supporting a vendor that yanks a credential.
Looking at certifications by vendor, Microsoft comes out on top, simply because they offer the most certifications overall.
AWS is right behind them. I’ve actually passed two different versions of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect exam, once back in 2019 and again in 2024, so I’m counting those as two separate certifications. The 2019 AWS exams was much simpler than the 2024 version. The 2019 versions felt more like Fundamental level in retrospect, but I have classified it as an associate level per AWS’s description of the certification.
And finally, projecting things forward over the next 10+ years, I’m on pace to land somewhere between 50 and 70 total certifications. That’s assuming vendors keep pumping out new certs at their current rate, though, and a good chunk of those will likely need to be Fundamental or Foundational level to keep that trend going.
Summary
That’s about it. I plan on updating this every so often when I grab new certifications. Currently I am studying for the Microsoft DP-800 SQL AI Developer Associate, and I hear Microsoft created a new DP-901 Azure Data Fundamentals exam that should be pretty easy to knock out. My streak of getting a new certification every year should continue into 2027.
If you have any questions, send me an email or make a comment.