Oracle ACE Apprentice: A first look at the program’s newest rank, from two developers who started there

Not everyone may know this, but our APEX team is now home to no fewer than seven Oracle ACEs: three Associates, three Pros, and one Director. Which means we can, with a straight face, reference the famous 1960 Western with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. And two members of that seven have a story worth telling, because they got their start through the program’s newest entry point: they joined as ACE Apprentices a while back, and have since progressed to ACE Associate.

But jokes aside, what exactly is this new Apprentice title, and what does it lead to? That’s what this article is about, straight from two people who actually walked the path.

If you’re looking for a broader introduction to the whole program, covering the levels, the benefits, and how the nomination process works, my colleagues and I already covered all of that in detail in a separate article on the Oracle ACE Program. This piece is deliberately narrower. It’s about ACE Apprentice specifically: what it is, why Oracle created it, how you actually get it (the process is genuinely different from the classic ACE path), and what two of our team make of it now that they’ve moved beyond it.

What is Oracle ACE Apprentice?

ACE Apprentice is the newest and lowest tier in the Oracle ACE Program. Oracle unveiled it at Oracle AI World in late 2025 and opened registration shortly after, which makes it a genuinely fresh addition. The program had run on three levels (Associate, Pro, Director) for years, and this is the first structural change to that ladder in a long time. With Apprentice in place, the program now recognizes contributors at four levels instead of three.

It’s aimed at people who work with Oracle technology and have real technical knowledge, but are only just starting to share that knowledge publicly. According to Oracle, the level is a good fit for:

• specialists working at organizations that have recently adopted Oracle technology,
• people using Oracle Cloud’s always-free services for their own projects,
• students and recent graduates from technical fields,
• career changers moving into IT.

In practice, though, it’s a fit for anyone who wants to join the Oracle Community through active participation and doesn’t yet have the years of conference talks and published articles that the higher tiers expect.

The framing Oracle uses is worth repeating, because it captures the intent well: ACE Apprentice is meant to be a roadmap, not a gateway. The traditional way into the ACE program is a nomination, where you (or someone on your behalf) put your contributions forward, and they’re assessed against a points threshold. That works, but it implicitly asks you to already be a contributor before you’re recognized as one. Apprentice flips that around. Instead of waiting at a gate until you’ve accumulated enough to be let through, you get an official “start of the journey” and a marked path forward. It’s a pathway rather than a checkpoint, and honestly, that’s a more welcoming way to bring new people into a community. Our two colleagues are proof the roadmap actually leads somewhere: both started here and have since reached Associate.

How ACE Apprentice differs from the rest of the program

Here’s the part that surprised us most, and the detail most worth understanding if you’re weighing this up: the way you earn Apprentice is not the same as the way you earn Associate, Pro, or Director.

The classic ACE levels are about advocacy, measured in talks, articles, plugins, forum help, and community organizing, and scored against a points system. Apprentice, by contrast, is built around Oracle certification. You pick an area of interest, take the corresponding Oracle University course, pass the certification exam, and that achievement is what carries you into the program and, step by step, toward Associate status.

That’s a meaningful distinction. The higher tiers reward what you’ve given to the community; Apprentice rewards what you’ve learned and pairs it with the skills to start giving back. It’s a certification-anchored on-ramp that then teaches you the advocacy side, such as blogging, public speaking, and building a profile, rather than assuming you already do those things. If you’ve ever felt that the ACE program was something you’d get to “once you were ready,” Apprentice is Oracle’s answer: it’s designed to support you while you get ready.

(As a small aside that APEX people will appreciate: the Apprentice registration portal itself is built on Oracle APEX. There’s something fitting about signing up for your first step into the Oracle community through an app made with the very technology many of us specialize in.)

How to become an Oracle ACE Apprentice

The process is refreshingly concrete, with no nomination and no waiting to be discovered. Here’s how it goes, step by step.

1. Register for the program. Sign up on the Oracle ACE Program site (ace.oracle.com/apprentice) and choose one of the available learning paths. One practical tip from experience: use the same email address for your Oracle University certification account and your Apprentice registration, because the two need to line up for your certification to be recognized later.
2. Choose a learning path. After registering, you select a specific training track within Oracle University, in an area such as AI, Cloud Infrastructure, Data Management, Fusion Applications, or Java. Pick something aligned with the work you actually do or want to do; the point isn’t to collect a badge, it’s to deepen knowledge you’ll use.
3. Complete the course and earn the certificate. Work through your chosen course and pass the associated certification exam. Worth knowing up front: the courses and exams are paid, though Oracle periodically runs promotions and free-exam windows, so it’s worth timing your attempt to catch one if you can.
4. Certificate verification. Once you’ve passed, your certification is verified by an ACE Admin. In our experience this takes roughly one to two weeks, so don’t worry if nothing happens instantly after you pass.
5. Complete your profile. After successful verification, you fill in your ACE Apprentice profile, which then gets a second review by the ACE Program Team. Accept the program’s terms of participation, and that’s it: you get access to the member application and are officially added to the Oracle ACE Directory.

The whole thing is deliberately structured so you always know what the next step is. That clarity is, frankly, the best feature of the level.

What are the benefits of ACE Apprentice?

The benefits cluster into three areas. They’re more modest than what a Pro or Director receives, with no CloudWorld pass and no travel support, but for someone starting out, they’re precisely the things that help you build momentum.

Visibility and recognition

• A profile in the official Oracle ACE Directory, alongside every other ACE.
• An official Oracle University badge.
• Digital assets you can use across your social media.

Access to Oracle’s knowledge and teams

• Access to a dedicated Slack channel with Oracle product teams, a direct line to the people who build the technology, which is genuinely rare to have this early.
• Invitations to exclusive technical sessions and product overviews.

Professional growth

• Training in public speaking, blogging, and personal-brand building, which are the advocacy skills the rest of the program assumes you already have.
• Support in growing your social media presence.
• Mentorship opportunities.

Notice the shape of that list. It isn’t a pile of perks; it’s a starter kit for becoming a community contributor. The Slack access and mentorship in particular are what turn “I passed a certification” into “I’m now part of something and I know what to do next.”

Is it worth it? A few honest thoughts

Since I already share a fuller personal take in our main ACE article, I’ll keep mine short and specific to Apprentice, then hand over to the two colleagues who actually earned the title.

I think this level fills a real gap. For years, the honest answer to “how do I get into the ACE program?” was some version of “go and become a visible community contributor first, then apply.” That’s fine advice for the confident, but it quietly turns away exactly the people the community most benefits from welcoming: the capable developer who hasn’t yet written a public word, the student with talent and no platform, the person mid-career-change who assumes this sort of thing isn’t for them yet. Apprentice hands those people a concrete first step and a map for the second one.

I’ll also add the same caveat I always do, because it stays true at every tier: the ACE program isn’t for everyone, and that’s completely fine. You can be an excellent developer and never hold any ACE title. It isn’t a certificate of skill, and no one should treat it as a box that must be ticked. But if you have the itch to share what you know, and you’ve been waiting for the “right moment” to start, Apprentice is about as low-friction an invitation as you’ll get. Consider this your nudge.

But you don’t have to take it from me. I’m an ACE Pro looking at Apprentice from the outside, so I’ll let the two people who actually started there give you the view that counts. Both joined as Apprentices and have since progressed to Associate, so they can speak not just to what the level is like, but to where it leads.

Tomas Kucharzyk (tkucharzyk@pretius.com) on why he decided to start at Apprentice and how the path to Associate played out:

“Before joining the program, I was already writing articles, speaking at conferences, and creating plugins. I genuinely enjoyed contributing to the Oracle community – sharing new discoveries, writing helpful tutorials, and helping others solve problems. Becoming an Oracle ACE Apprentice felt like a natural next step: I could continue doing what I enjoyed while gaining recognition for my contributions. It also gave me a clear path to grow, eventually leading me to become an Oracle ACE Associate”.

Wojciech Sowa (wsowa@pretius.com) on what starting at Apprentice gave him and who he’d recommend it to:

“I’d been following news about the ACE Apprentice program from the very start of the initiative. I was curious what it would be like to be part of it and what opportunities it might open up for me. The program offers plenty of benefits, but what I value most is the chance to reach out to other ACEs, ask them directly about a problem I’m wrestling with, and get a genuinely useful answer. ACE Apprentice is a temporary stop on the way to ACE Associate, and that’s exactly how it played out for me. I’d already been sharing knowledge with the Oracle community for a while, so I started logging each new activity on my ACE profile to build up the points I needed. That effort paid off, and today I hold the ACE Associate title”.

If this article sparked your interest and you’re thinking about joining the Oracle ACE Program yourself, any of us would be glad to help and answer whatever questions you have. You can reach Tomas and Wojtek at the addresses above, or me at lcieslik@pretius.com.