Certification Program Structure
SS&C Blue Prism divides its credentials into targeted disciplines: Automation Development, Implementation Architecture, and Intelligence Automation Management. Rather than forcing every candidate through a single track, the program allows you to align your certification with your daily responsibilities. Developers focus on building the bots, architects design the infrastructure, and managers govern the pipeline.
The Developer Path
Most technical professionals begin with the AD01: Blue Prism Developer exam. It tests your ability to configure a basic automation solution. You must demonstrate familiarity with the core mechanics of the platform, including object studio, process studio, and exception handling.
After gaining practical experience, developers move to the APD01: Blue Prism Professional Developer credential. This exam demands a deeper technical understanding. It evaluates your ability to build complex process automations using established best practices. You must also prove you can analyze Process Definition Documents (PDDs) to ensure your technical solutions meet the original business requirements.
The jump from the associate to the professional level is noticeable. The professional exam filters out candidates who only know how to make a bot work in a test environment. It requires you to know how to make a bot survive in production, where applications freeze, data formats change, and networks drop.
Architecture and Solution Design
Bots do not run in a vacuum. They require a secure, resilient environment. The ASD01: Designing Blue Prism Process Solutions exam targets individuals responsible for translating business needs into technical blueprints. It tests your ability to design scalable and secure automation workflows before a developer writes a single line of logic.
For those managing the physical or virtual infrastructure, the ATA02: Designing a Blue Prism (Version 6.0) Environment exam validates your knowledge of the underlying architecture. This includes configuring database servers, managing credential stores, and establishing secure access protocols. An infrastructure failure stops all digital workers simultaneously, making this credential valuable to operations teams.
The Robotic Operating Model
Blue Prism separates itself from other RPA vendors through its Robotic Operating Model (ROM). This proprietary framework dictates how an organization should structure, govern, and scale its digital workforce.
The ARA02: Blue Prism Certified ROM Architect Exam (Version 2) tests your command of these delivery principles. Passing this 60-minute exam proves you understand enterprise maturity models, pipeline management, and process discovery. A ROM architect does not write code. Instead, they define the organizational model, establish the Center of Excellence, and set policies for data archiving and logging.
Managing five bots is an IT task. Managing 500 bots is a corporate governance challenge. The ROM architect ensures the organization treats digital workers with the same compliance rigor as human employees.
SS&C Blue Prism prices its software by individual "Digital Workers," where each unit executes one automated process at a time. The financial cost of idle or broken bots adds up quickly in large deployments. Passing these exams proves you have the specific technical and operational discipline to keep those expensive digital workers running continuously and accurately.