How to become a Red Hat Certified Architect
What is a Red Hat Certified Architect?
A Red Hat® Certified Architect (RHCA®) is the highest Red Hat Certification an individual can earn. Around the world, enterprises understand the value an RHCA can bring to their IT organization and how they can positively affect the business overall. An individual who attains this level of certification demonstrates through a series of hands-on, performance-based exams that they possess breadth across technologies, depth within a given technology, or both.
What does it take to become a Red Hat Certified Architect?
An RHCA is a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE®), Red Hat Certified Enterprise Microservices Developer (RHCEMD), or Red Hat Certified Cloud-native Developer (RHCCD) who has attained our highest level of certification by earning—and keeping current—five additional certifications chosen from the system administrator and developer lists.
Red Hat provides two different Red Hat Certified Architect certifications: Red Hat Certified Architect in Infrastructure and Red Hat Certified Architect in Enterprise Applications. Candidates for RHCA, regardless of path, have flexibility to choose certifications based on their career aspirations or employer requirements.
The benefits to becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect
Becoming an RHCA requires significant study, passing multiple exams, and keeping multiple credentials current. Once earned, the benefits for RHCAs include:
- Exclusive discount. RHCAs are eligible for a 50% discount on a Red Hat Learning Subscription to help keep credentials current or pursue new ones.
- Industry-recognized skills. Companies understand the value that an RHCA can bring to their IT organization.
- Organizational impact. Organizations with Red Hat-certified staff linked certification to greater efficiency and cost savings.
- RHCA swag. RHCAs receive an exclusive, RHCA-branded swag package and can purchase additional RHCA swag that is only available to RHCAs.
“Having Red Hat Certification allows us to implement solutions both quickly and with high quality. This helps us save money in how we run our business.”
- IDC Study Participant1
“Exams in many IT certification programs tend to focus on selecting the right answer out of multiple choices, whereas Red Hat Certification exams are more practical, more difficult, and you actually learn a lot more. I decided to become a Red Hat certified professional because I like to focus on things that actually push me to be my best.
Level up your RHCA certification
Given the investment of time and effort required to become an RHCA, it’s not surprising that many RHCAs expand their skills and knowledge beyond the minimum requirements to become an RHCA. A higher level of RHCA can be attained by earning more than five certifications beyond the base credentials. For example, earning six credentials beyond RHCD, RHCEMD, or RHCJD earns an RHCA Level II designation as long as the six credentials remain current. If one of the credentials becomes non-current, the RHCA reverts to Level I, and if a second credential becomes non-current, the RHCA status would no longer apply.
Become a Red Hat Certified Architect
Are you ready to accept the challenge? Learn more about earning this top credential and demonstrating a mastery of Red Hat technologies.
“Becoming a Red Hat certified professional showed me the value of the hands-on certifications and being introduced to new technology topics.
