AWS Solutions Architect at Amazon

Amazon
rB4yjx

Go to company page Amazon

rB4yjx
Feb 5, 2021 22 Comments

What are the skills needed?
What are the learning opportunities?

What is the scope of the role in other companies?

Is it possible to shift to Proserve cloud architect later? I'd say this is definitely possible..

Which teams are the best to work for (public sector, enterprise, etc.. ) and why?

What's the work life balance like? Are there any on-call shifts, working on weekends?

How to get promoted to L6 SA?

What does a day in the life of a SA look like?
Is it around best practices, designing solutions, and troubleshooting issues?

Anything you wished you knew about the role before you joined?

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TOP 22 Comments
  • Amazon
    sAkd48

    Go to company page Amazon

    sAkd48
    Startup Solutions Architect here.

    You don't need coding experience but it helps when it comes to building PoC and demos.

    I'm not in a specific vertical, meaning my customers are from different industries, which means I'm exposed to basically ANY service. As you can see, I'm forced to learn a bit of everything, for example, one day I'd be talking with customers about iot and how to optimize their architecture. 2 hours later I might be talking to a customer that's taking live video from security cameras and running some ML/AI , etc.

    There's a constant context switching, it can be good, or bad. Depending on what you like and how you manage your agenda.

    As a SA you engage with customers on a strategic level, you understand their business goals and with your technical skills you help them achieve those goal by suggesting services, best practices, architecture reviews, technical validation, etc.

    You don't do troubleshooting, that's what support is for. But you can give guidance.

    You also deliver activities like workshops, GameDays, immersion days, hackthons, etc.

    There's no on-call or working on weekends. You have full autonomy in your role. I can spend weeks without talking or knowing what my manager is up to.

    As for WLB, that's a tough one. There are days where there's no customer work and you're supposed to work on internal stuff, like blog posts and certifications (both are part of your goals). But this year in particular I've had brutal load or work, that might me my fault though for not managing my time correctly.

    You get promoted by delivering:)

    We have a leveling guide (it's in our wiki) where we have our goals. I've heard that l5 to l6 is not that difficult.

    You can perfectly switch to pro serv and viceversa (assuming you have the hard skills)

    Prior to joining aws as a SA I was a backend developer for 15 years. Some of my colleagues were CTO's.

    As for opportunities in other companies, I've seen more and more ads on companies looking for SA'S, but you can also transition to management, but in my opinion, you're ready to be a CTO.

    There's no normal day for me. I might be answering questions via email,or preparing for a meeting, or building a demo, or all those things at the same time. Sometimes customers ask for best practices in certain topics and I need to look for help (you have access to other specialists and internal communities) and research a lot. Sometimes customers are looking for ways to optimize costs, and you have to dive deep on what their doing and suggest changes to their architecture, or purchase of reserved instances, savings plans, etc.

    One thing I wish I knew? The context switching is brutal and I also wish my role was more hands-on than it actually is.
    Feb 5, 2021 8
    • Amazon
      sAkd48

      Go to company page Amazon

      sAkd48
      We don't have quotas. We do have other perfomance metrics, some of them are aligned with account managers and they do have quotas, we work together.
      Feb 15, 2021
    • New
      rPbP03

      New

      rPbP03
      This is a great comment. Thank you. I'm joining as an SA in June.
      May 3, 2021
  • Amazon
    cantor

    Go to company page Amazon

    cantor
    L6 Specialist SA here. My day to day is similar to what has been said in other posts here, but I'll add a bit.

    My day to day is a mix of customer meetings, internal meetings, building architectures for customers, writing (blog posts, technical documents, and internal narratives).

    For learning opportunities, we have Technical Field Communities within AWS that focus on different areas like ML, containers, networking, etc. Specialist like myself are part of these TFCs, and we take on people who want to develop skill in a particular area and mentor them. That's certainly one way to learn more about an area you're interested.

    You could definitely shift to ProServe if you want. You'd probably want to get a few years under your belt and really build your skills in core areas like EC2, networking, storage, and security.

    There are a lot of different SA teams, so it really comes down to what you think you might want to do. There are SAs that focus on verticals like automotive, healthcare, energy, etc. There are startup SAs that work with a lot of small startups. Partner SAs work with third party companies that are building a product or service on top of AWS. If you come from a background of academia and research, public sector SA might be a good role for you.
    I work in commercial in a global team and I love it mainly because I get to work on some really interesting, varied, complex, and high profile projects.

    Work life balance is good. I have almost complete autonomy in my role, so, for the most part, I pick the projects I want to work on. No one cares if I block out 45 minutes in the afternoon to play with kids. Sometimes I work on the weekends, but it's usually just catching up on emails or doing some certification studying. There is no on call or shift work.

    I do some troubleshooting, but it's more like....I built this architecture for a customer as part of a proof of concept and they're not getting the performance they expected or they have questions about setting it up.

    You definitely don't need to know how to code, but it definitely helps. I do a bit of go are python, but it's more for proof of concept tyoe code...not production quality.

    Actually I think knowing a bit of DevOps techniques would help more...knowing how to automate some common tasks, make repeatable solutions, etc. really helps when I'm building customer architecture.
    Feb 6, 2021 5
    • Will there be any coding round/test in the interview process?
      Feb 22, 2021
    • Amazon
      cantor

      Go to company page Amazon

      cantor
      You'll have a tech assessment, but it's going to involve cloud architecture. No one's going to ask you to solve LC-style problems.

      The process might be a little different since I joined. There is now an online assessment, which I think replaces one of the phone screens.

      You might also have a "take-home assignment". Mine was an architecture on AWS that had some bugs. I was asked to identify them, provide fixes, and suggest improvements to the architecture (cost, performance, security, etc). I then wrote it all up in a report that was sent to the "customer".

      It was a very simple architecture...if you go through the basic a cloud guru course you can do it with no problems. One of my loop interviews involved going throughy solution and discussing why I did this, why I didn't do that, etc.

      Again, it's very possible this has changed, and it can vary by organisation and role.

      But that's approximately the kind of tech questions you'll see.
      Feb 23, 2021
  • New
    rPbP03

    New

    rPbP03
    Did you get the role? I'm joining in June.
    May 3, 2021 3
  • Amazon
    wfnw61

    Go to company page Amazon

    wfnw61
    Did you get an interview call?
    Feb 5, 2021 1
  • United Overseas Bank Limited (U
    unitedcode

    United Overseas Bank Limited (U

    unitedcode
    I think is like a technical presales role.
    Feb 5, 2021 0