Why AWS Certificate & How Many Types?

madhuDm · October 2019

cochi78 · October 2019

AWS certs are in hot demand and can be a career booster.

Technical people mostly skip the Cloud practitioner (more of a sales thing).

Most start with Solution Architect Associate, which touches a wide variety of AWS services. It's common to see the SysOp Associate or Developer Associate in conjunction, because having 2-3 Associates shows your dedication. Also, they are not excessively hard.

Solution Architect Professional and DevOps Professional are way harder but more prestigious. Having one of them will immediately boost the amount of headhunters swarming you.

The Specialties are in between Associate/Professional in difficulty (personal opinion), but not that well-known yet. Most in demand is the Big Data Spec, but the Security Spec is also a good one.

Advanced Networking and Alexa Skill Builder are not very popular, maybe the Machine Learning Spec is better? No personal frame of reference there.

All in all, you could have 11 AWS certs if you count the Cloud Practitioner. That will look strange though, because it's hard to be an expert in a handful of services - let alone a dozen. Also, the renewals will kind of annoy you.

Speaking of renewals: every 3 years, by retaking the test (no CEU/CEP mechanic yet). Cloud Practitioner gets auto-renewed, if you renew an Associate. DevOps auto-renews Developer + SysOp, while Solution Architect Pro renews Solution Architect Associate.

cyberguypr · October 2019

Question in the title and absolutely zero body... either spam or someone is super lazy. Intelligent questions get intelligent answers.

test4500 · October 2019

wow! Cochi78 what an answer!!!

I have done the CPP, SA-A and CD-A but there was zero interest from recruiters here in the UK (market a bit flat with Brexit and all...) ....so I moved on to do Cisco Cyber Ops and CISSP ....with an ultimate aim of doing Security and Big data specialties next year.

I was presuming that they would be harder than the SA-P exams but did think they would be more valuable as its a path with a few hurdles to get them done.

The growth is AWS is stunning (40% YoY) ...and that does create the usual problem of getting quality staff so hopefully next year get that security job in the cloud.

great post!

JDMurray · October 2019

Yes, a very good answer to a sparse question.

matt333 · October 2019

I have a PDF of the advanced networking certification. I'm not sure of the value of this one in the job market. I mostly downloaded it so I know how to fix it when the DevOps teams brake it.

Why AWS Certificate & How Many Types?

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