Administrator Certification Role

The Administrator role is for people who own the operational health of Optimizely environments. You might be an IT administrator managing user access and SSO configuration, a platform owner responsible for environment provisioning and monitoring, or a DevOps engineer maintaining CI/CD pipelines for CMS deployments. Your focus is on keeping the platform running, secure, and correctly configured.

Administrator exams emphasize configuration, security, and operational tasks. You are expected to demonstrate:

• User and access management — Configuring roles, permissions, SSO/SAML integration, and multi-factor authentication.
• Environment management — Provisioning environments, managing deployments, and configuring hosting (CMS PaaS) or cloud settings (CMS SaaS).
• Monitoring and troubleshooting — Using logs, health checks, and diagnostic tools to identify and resolve platform issues.
• Security configuration — Applying security headers, configuring CORS, managing API keys, and enforcing data policies.
• Backup and recovery — Understanding backup strategies, disaster recovery procedures, and data retention policies.

Core and Advanced exams include configuration tasks in a sandboxed environment where you set up permissions, configure integrations, or troubleshoot a misconfigured environment.

Track	Foundation	Core	Advanced
CMS SaaS	Yes	Yes	Yes
CMS PaaS	Yes	Yes	Yes
Web Experimentation	Yes	Yes	—
Feature Experimentation	Yes	Yes	—
Configured Commerce	Yes	Yes	Yes
ODP	Yes	Yes	—

Administrator certifications reach the Advanced tier in tracks with significant operational complexity — CMS (both models) and Commerce. Other tracks offer Foundation and Core.

1. Start with CMS SaaS Foundation or CMS PaaS Foundation — CMS administration is the most common starting point for Administrators.
2. Progress to CMS Core — The Core exam tests your ability to configure a production-ready CMS environment.
3. Add Commerce Foundation — If your organization uses Configured Commerce, administration skills are essential.
4. Add Web Experimentation Foundation — Understanding how experiments are configured helps you support marketing teams.
5. Pursue CMS Advanced — The Advanced exam validates your ability to handle complex operational scenarios.

• Study the administration and configuration sections of the learning paths.
• Practice in a sandbox environment — configure users, roles, and permissions.
• Review security best practices documentation.
• Foundation exams require 4-6 hours of preparation. Core exams require 12-20 hours including hands-on configuration practice.