Starting a Career in Amazon AWS: Training, Certifications, and Salary

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most widely used cloud platform, with over 200 feature-packed services available from data centres worldwide. AWS is used in 190 countries by millions of customers, including large businesses, startups, and top government organizations, to cut costs, improve flexibility, and accelerate innovation. AWS currently holds about ⅓ of the cloud service market.

How to Start a Career in Amazon AWS: Training and Certifications Required

The obvious choice is to complete a cloud degree program or at least have a tech background, but you can also get started with the following steps:

• The first step is to learn! You can learn everything about AWS from web pages, Udemy, Coursera, or whatever training platform of your choice or learn directly from the source Amazon through the Amazon Web Service Education course, which you’d get a certificate from after completing the course and passing your exam. Expected study hour depends entirely on you; however, it’s not long, and you can cut the time by engaging a cloud professional to assist you with your training. Go the extra mile by following cloud professionals or thought leaders and the cloud industry tend, news and updates on all social media platforms and news outlets while training.
• Up next are certifications! Being certified doesn’t guarantee a job, but it is a good place to start. Currently, there are nine different Amazon AWS Certifications. As a general newbie in IT and cloud computing, you should begin with the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, which verifies your broad mastery of the AWS Cloud. We’ve listed all the available certifications below based on the different career pathways available in Amazon web services and the skill level required.

 Available AWS Certifications

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
• AWS Certified Developer – Associate
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
• AWS Certified Security – Specialty
• AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
• AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

Apply for internships to gain practical experience in the field. You can apply for internships on Amazon Jobs, Linkedin, or other platforms like ZipRecruiter.

Preparing for the Exam

Use it. Using AWS is the only effective method to learn it. Exams verify your AWS proficiency, but the best preparation is a hands-on experience, ensuring that you truly understand what must be done. Utilize the Free Tier to the fullest extent by opening a free AWS account. Exam preparation tools, strategies, and practice questions are available on the Amazon AWS Certification page. You can also locate suggested whitepapers for each test on the same website. 

Exam Day

• Register for the test as soon as you’re prepared on the website and Opt for a time that suits you.
• Try not to consume a lot of coffee or water before your exam. While bathroom breaks are permitted, the timer continues to run.
• Be conscious but not too conscious of time. Each professional test consists of 65-100 questions with a duration of 130-170 minutes. This means you have about 2 minutes to spend on each question. Be conscious of this and ensure you don’t spend too much time on a question. 

Note: When you fail an AWS certification exam, you must wait 14 days before you can repeat it. The number of exam tries is unrestricted. However, you must pay the entire registration price for each exam attempt. (These will cost $100 AWS cloud practitioner exam and $150 for associate exams). Once you pass a test, you are prohibited from taking it again for two years.

Expected Amazon Aws salary range

The average annual Amazon Aws salary in the United States is $41,044. That comes to around $19.73 an hour. This translates to $789 each week or $3,420 per month. However, some Amazon Aws Jobs earn way more; for instance, AWS Cloud Architects earn up to $150,000 annually.

Don’t leave just yet. It’s just about to get interesting. After a lot of research and interviews, we have put together things you need to expect as you start your Amazon AWS career.

What to expect when building a career in Amazon Aws.

When you’re working with AWS, you’re working with a company that’s constantly in growth mode and trying to hire people who are skilled in the skills needed for the future, so you have to keep learning. There is a lot of opportunity for advancement within AWS. However, you get promoted within the company through doing well on projects and being a great teammate. If you work hard and do well at your job, then you’ll be promoted like anyone else who has been promoted within AWS through their performance on projects.

According to a former employee quote on indeed.com in 2020, “Working with the AWS Startup team as well as other points of contact from across the business, you will program manage the development, launch, and reporting of programs for the AWS startup customer segment. The candidate will also be responsible for the results of those programs and the impact they have on the business. You will also assess risks, anticipate bottlenecks, provide escalation management, make tradeoffs, and balance the business needs as you implement centralized program execution. You will report on the outcomes of all our work and strive to provide transparency and accountability across the organization for all of these initiatives.”

As you start your AWS career, here are some things to note. 

Ask Questions

There’s a lot of information about AWS out there, which can be overwhelming at first. Reach out to cloud experts for their insights, or simply ask google all your questions. Consume as much information as you can. It can be especially challenging for you as a beginner who has never used an online service. For example, if someone says, “I need an EC2 instance,” you may think they mean an actual computer or server, but they actually mean an instance within EC2. Understanding what they’re talking about is important so you can use them properly! Again, ask questions; it is better but not absolutely necessary if you have a professional to consult.