AWS Solutions Architect certification - good for long term career?
For someone who has spent 20 years in the Java/enterprise dev world, from hands on to management, is moving to AWS solution Architect role is a good move? Your thoughts? Few things: Will it open up more remote only work options? More companies will be moving their existing tech to cloud and possibly more work for people who know how to do it. More companies that are starting now use cloud as their initial infrastructure so the market will expand for this skill set. This will be little more high level role than dev day to day which is more hands on. What do you say? PS: will be moving to Dallas, TX from NY soon.
Certifications are not worth anything but the forced learning.
Agreed. No job is going to turn you down if you can demonstrate that you have the requisite knowledge in the interview, cert or no cert.
@offbyOme: yes, I have resisted the java certifications for the longest time. Never looked into them at all. I got to be senior engineer in a java shop and led Java team and eventual led the software department consisting of java, .Net and DB teams with zero certification. For AWS, I feel there are quite a few moving parts, I don’t have experience in any of them unlike java/J2EE landscape where I had the benefit of experience. So maybe it would be good investment of time to get familiar with the overall picture and use it as a way to get one’s foot in the door. Conversely it would be tricky to get a job if one doesn’t have the experience of actually setting stuff up on the cloud or cloud migration. Maybe one could spin the lab work into a proof of concept type project and see if the interviewer buys it!
Remote only options - Yes. Look up AWS partners and apply for jobs , almost all of them will have remote opportunities
Thank you ridgid! And nice to see you here replying in addition to your other replies in my posts, much appreciated!
If you choose solutions architect you will most likely end up in designing backend system architecture and migration work. It depends on what you like the most .. coding or providing architecture solutions? Be careful with the positions some positions will have the grunt work during migration.
Thank you RightBrain! I would like building the big picture systems without a whole lot of hands on coding. I hear you on getting dumped on the migration grunt work. Not sure how could one say no to those .. is that expected of AWS SA?
It completely depends on position, company, team and project.. there are many aspects .. it can be tricky to find such positions where you can avoid such things but definitely possible.
People with certificates on average earn more than those without in comparable roles AWS is massive and there is great skills shortage. Pretty much ignore most of the responses on this thread. Source: I am a Solutions Architect at AWS and certification has paid off really well for me ps: L6 is wrong to say that SA is not hands on. We have to do workshops, etc - though it’s true that we don’t touch customers’ systems
Thanks kXaQ55 for your reply, much appreciated! Does Amazon AWS directly hire AWS certified SA? Or does one interview for a senior Engineer and then get matched at the AWS team? What does the travel look like in AWS SA role? Are there folks doing it remotely and does that depend on team and a manager’s approval. You mentioned workshops etc, who’s the audience? Is it at industry conferences? I would think that AWA is going to be huge in future, bigger than what’s it already at. I know from first hand knowledge from mid size IT department me that they are looking to move their local data center into cloud and if it weren’t for Govt. sector (they are State govt) they would have done it long time ago. Also department politics that wants to save their jobs( mostly dev ops folks) who currently maintains the on premise data center and local deployments etc. I’m certainly interested in exploring it further and would love to hear varied opinions.
I got certified 2 years ago. I am a junior engineer and it helped me learn about system architecture. Aws services are useful if you need to build something.
Agree with this
Yes, it’s good way to get a crash course in the overall landscape. Curious why you felt the need to get certified in AWS? Did your employer want to use AWS for their systems or was it your desire to learn more about it and not necessarily look at it as a career move in that direction?