Building credibility and getting certified
It is hard to argue that the cloud is not an important technology shift. We have established that AWS is the clear market and thought leader in the cloud space.
Comparing the cloud to an earthquake, we could say that it started slowly as a small rumbling that started getting louder and louder, and we are now at a point where the walls are shaking and it's only getting stronger.
In the The market share, influence, and adoption of AWS section, we introduced the concept of FOMO. There, we mentioned that enterprises are now eager to adopt cloud technologies because they do not want to fall behind their competition and become obsolete.
Hopefully, by now you are excited to learn more about AWS and other cloud providers, or at the very least, you're getting a little nervous and catching a little FOMO yourself.
We will devote the rest of this chapter to showing you the path of least resistance for how to become an AWS guru and someone that can bill themselves as an AWS expert.
As with other technologies, it is hard to become an expert without hands-on experience, and it's hard to get hands-on experience if you can't demonstrate that you're an expert. The best method, in my opinion, that you can use to crack this chicken-and-egg problem is to get certified.
Fortunately, AWS offers a wide array of certifications that will demonstrate to your potential clients and employers your deep AWS knowledge and expertise.
As AWS creates more and more services, it continues to offer new certifications (and render some of them obsolete) aligned with these new services.
Let's review the certifications available as of August 2020.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner – Foundational
This is the most basic certification offered by AWS. It is meant to demonstrate a broad- strokes understanding of the core services and foundational knowledge of AWS. It is also a good certification for non-technical people that need to be able to communicate using the AWS lingo but are not necessarily going to be configuring or developing in AWS.
This certification is ideal to demonstrate a basic understanding of AWS technologies for people such as salespeople, business analysts, marketing associates, executives, and project managers.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Important note
There is a new exam version (SAA-C02) as of March 22, 2020.
This is the most popular certification offered by AWS. Many technically minded developers and administrators skip taking the Cloud Practitioner certification and start by taking this certification instead. If you are looking to demonstrate technical expertise in AWS, obtaining this certification is a good start and the bare minimum to demonstrate AWS proficiency.
AWS Certified Developer – Associate
Obtaining this certification will demonstrate your ability to design, develop, and deploy applications in AWS. Even though this is a Developer certification, do not expect to see any code in any of the questions during the exam. However, having knowledge of at least one programming language supported by AWS will help you to achieve this certification. Expect to see many of the same concepts and similar questions to what you would see in the Solutions Architect certification.
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
Obtaining this certification will demonstrate to potential employers and clients that you have experience in deploying, configuring, scaling up, managing, and migrating applications using AWS services. You should expect the difficulty level of this certification to be a little bit higher than the other two Associate-level certifications, but also expect quite a bit of overlap in the type of questions that will be asked with this certification and the other two Associate-level certifications.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
This certification together with the DevOps Engineer – Professional certification is at least two or three times harder than the Associate-level certification. Getting this certification will demonstrate to employers that you have a deep and thorough understanding of AWS services, best practices, and optimal architectures based on the particular business requirements for a given project. Obtaining this certification shows to potential employers that you are an expert in the design and creation of distributed systems and applications on the AWS platform. It used to be that having at least one of the Associate-level certifications was a prerequisite in order to sit the Professional-level certifications, but AWS has eliminated that requirement.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
This advanced AWS certification validates knowledge on how to provision, manage, scale, and secure AWS resources and services. Obtaining this certification will demonstrate to potential employers that you can run their DevOps operations and that you can proficiently develop solutions and applications in AWS.
AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
This AWS specialty certification demonstrates that you possess the skills to design and deploy AWS services as part of a comprehensive network architecture and that you know how to scale using best practices. Together with the Security – Specialty certification, this is one of the hardest certifications to obtain.
AWS Certified Security – Specialty
Possessing the AWS Certified Security – Specialty certification demonstrates to potential employers that you are well versed in the ins and outs of AWS security. It shows that you know security best practices for encryption at rest, encryption in transit, user authentication and authorization, penetration testing, and generally being able to deploy AWS services and applications in a secure manner that aligns with business requirements.
AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
This is a good certification to have in your pocket if you are a data scientist or a data analyst. It shows to potential employers that you are familiar with many of the core machine learning concepts, as well as the AWS services that can be used to deliver machine learning and artificial intelligence projects, such as these:
- Amazon SageMaker
- Amazon Rekognition
- Amazon Comprehend
- Amazon Translate
- Amazon Lex
- Amazon Kinesis
- Amazon DynamoDB
AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty
This is a focused certification. It tests for a small subset of services that are used to deliver Alexa skills.
AWS Certified Database – Specialty
Having this certification under your belt demonstrates to potential employers your mastery of the persistence services in AWS and your deep knowledge of the best practices needed to manage them.
Important note
This is a brand new certification as of April 6, 2020.
Some of the services tested are these:
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon Neptune
- Amazon DynamoDB
- Amazon Kinesis
- Amazon DocumentDB
AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
Completing this certification demonstrates to employers that you have a good understanding of the concepts needed to perform data analysis on petabyte-scale datasets.
Important note
This has a new certification name and exam version as of April 13, 2020 (formerly AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty).
This certification shows your ability to design, implement, and deploy analytics solutions that can deliver insights by enabling the visualization of data and implementing the appropriate security measures. Some of the services covered are listed here:
- Amazon QuickSight
- Amazon Kinesis
- Amazon DynamoDB
