IICTI Certified Full Stack Developer

Holders demonstrate that they can apply and evaluate full-stack system architecture and service boundary design, rendering strategies and modern web framework internals, client state, data synchronisation and offline-first design and aPI design, contracts and evolution, plus 8 further areas, in realistic professional scenarios, as defined in the AQSCERT scheme for Full Stack Developer.

Who it is for: Professionals working, or preparing to work, in software development roles.

1. 01Full-stack system architecture and service boundary design6% of the exam

   • Architect full-stack systems with service boundaries and decomposition choices justified by explicit trade-offs.
   • Scope: Modular monolith vs microservices, domain-driven design and bounded contexts, BFF and API gateway patterns, monorepo strategies (Nx, Turborepo), architecture decision records and fitness functions.
2. 02Rendering strategies and modern web framework internals6% of the exam

   • Evaluate and select rendering and data-loading strategies that balance performance, SEO, cost and complexity.
   • Scope: SSR, SSG, ISR and streaming SSR, React Server Components and hydration, islands and resumability, edge rendering, routing and data-loading models in Next.js, Remix/React Router and Nuxt.
3. 03Client state, data synchronisation and offline-first design6% of the exam

   • Design client data architectures that remain consistent, responsive and resilient under latency and disconnection.
   • Scope: Server-state caching (TanStack Query, SWR), global state trade-offs, optimistic updates and conflict resolution, CRDTs and local-first sync, real-time transport (WebSockets, SSE, WebTransport).
4. 04API design, contracts and evolution7% of the exam

   • Design API contracts that evolve safely across independently deployed clients and services.
   • Scope: REST maturity and HTTP semantics, GraphQL schema design and federation, gRPC and tRPC, OpenAPI/AsyncAPI contracts, idempotency keys, pagination, versioning and deprecation, consumer-driven contract testing.
5. 05Data persistence, consistency and transactional patterns13% of the exam

   • Architect persistence layers that meet consistency, performance and evolvability requirements.
   • Scope: Relational schema design and indexing, query plan analysis, isolation levels and anomalies, ORM pitfalls (N+1), zero-downtime migrations, outbox, saga and CQRS patterns, choosing document, key-value and search stores.
6. 06Web performance engineering and Core Web Vitals7% of the exam

   • Diagnose end-to-end performance bottlenecks and implement measurable improvements against defined budgets.
   • Scope: LCP, INP and CLS diagnosis, bundle analysis and code splitting, critical rendering path, image and font optimisation, HTTP/2-3, CDN and edge caching, backend latency profiling and performance budgets.
7. 07Full-stack application security and identity17% of the exam

   • Evaluate and harden full-stack applications against current web threats and identity attack patterns.
   • Scope: OWASP Top 10 and ASVS, XSS/CSRF/SSRF defences, CSP and security headers, OAuth 2.1, OIDC, PKCE and token handling in SPAs/BFFs, passkeys/WebAuthn, session management, secrets and supply-chain hygiene.
8. 08Distributed backends, messaging and resilience7% of the exam

   • Design asynchronous backend workflows that tolerate partial failure without data loss or duplication.
   • Scope: Message queues and event streaming (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS), delivery guarantees and idempotent consumers, background jobs, retries with backoff, circuit breakers, rate limiting and backpressure.
9. 09Cloud-native delivery, infrastructure as code and platform choices10% of the exam

   • Lead the design of delivery pipelines and runtime platforms that enable safe, frequent releases.
   • Scope: Containers and Kubernetes vs serverless and edge runtimes, Terraform/Pulumi, CI/CD pipelines, preview environments, progressive delivery (feature flags, canary, blue-green) and cost-aware deployment.
10. 10Observability and production troubleshooting7% of the exam

    • Diagnose production issues across client, network and server tiers using correlated telemetry.
    • Scope: OpenTelemetry traces, metrics and logs across browser and backend, real-user monitoring, error tracking, distributed trace analysis, SLOs and error budgets, incident debugging and post-incident review.
11. 11Test strategy and quality engineering across the stack8% of the exam

    • Design risk-based test strategies that give fast, reliable feedback across the full stack.
    • Scope: Testing pyramid vs trophy, component and integration testing, end-to-end testing with Playwright, contract and visual regression testing, test data management, flaky test control and mutation testing.
12. 12Accessibility, internationalisation and technical leadership6% of the exam

    • Lead engineering teams in delivering accessible, maintainable products under sustainable technical governance.
    • Scope: WCAG 2.2 AA and the European Accessibility Act, ARIA patterns and assistive technology testing, i18n/l10n architecture, design systems governance, code review culture and technical debt management.

Question types

Single choice 100%

Delivery

Online (remote proctored), Test centre, On-site (corporate)

Retakes

Up to three attempts within any 12-month period. A 14-day waiting period applies after a first unsuccessful attempt and 30 days after a second. Each retake requires a new booking and fee. Retakes draw a different randomised form from the question bank.

Provisional cut score — psychometric validation is required before live delivery. Blueprint v1.0.

1. 1

   Register

   Create a free account and start the programme.

2. 2

   Practice

   Online practice test (coming soon).

3. 3

   Training

   Optional

   Online course or classroom — or skip it.

4. 4

   Certification

   Independent exam and certification decision.

Training is optional and does not by itself confer certification. Find a training partner