Debating whether to actually commit time to studying for this or just keep learning Splunk Cloud on the job without the formal cert. Curious if anyone’s weighed this same decision.

From the research I’ve done, US admins holding the Splunk Cloud Certified Admin Certification are generally in the $110K–$145K range, and UK roles land around £65K–£85K, based on salary benchmarks CertBoosters put together. That’s enough of a gap that it seems worth the study time, assuming the numbers hold up in practice.

What convinced me it’s not just hype is the demand: cloud SIEM deployments are climbing fast, and companies migrating off on-prem Splunk specifically need people who understand the cloud-side architecture, not just traditional admin skills. That’s apparently a real, documented gap right now, not just marketing language.

Regionally, it’s not just a US/UK thing either; Germany’s manufacturing and infrastructure sector has made Splunk monitoring pretty standard, Canada’s got steady government/healthcare hiring, and even Singapore’s financial sector is picking up Splunk Cloud adoption. So the market isn’t narrow.

Before I start prepping, I found a solid breakdown of the Splunk Cloud Certified Admin Certification career path and salary benchmarks in detail here : https://www.certboosters.com/splunk/path/splunk-cloud-certified-admin

Anyone here currently prepping for the exam, or already went through it? What was the hardest part to study for?