In honor of Veterans Day: Veterans find workforce development resources and jobs available at AWS

In 2016, Amazon made a public commitment to hire and train military Veterans and spouses. We committed to hiring 25,000 military Veterans and spouses (a number of whom will join us in AWS) by 2021. As of this month, Amazon now employs more than 21,000 Veterans and military spouses in full- and part-time roles across the United States.

Amazon understands that many qualities that are foundational to military service align well with our culture. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we’ve developed a number of programs focused on engaging the military community, helping them gain AWS technical skills, and develop successful careers. Our training and apprenticeship programs – in collaboration with state and federal government, Veterans organizations, and educational institutions – help transitioning service members and spouses develop skills to prepare them for AWS software development, support, and data center operations roles. These technical skills can help Veterans find jobs, not just at AWS, but more broadly in the field of cloud computing. Learn more about available programs, training, and resources for Veterans and spouses.

Workforce resources: AWS Educate for Veterans

AWS Educate is Amazon’s grant-based, global initiative to provide educational institutions, educators, and students with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning and graduate students ready to enter a cloud-enabled workplace. AWS Educate addresses the overwhelming global need for a technically skilled workforce in one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy and provides opportunities for high-paying careers in the cloud.

AWS Educate for Veterans provides AWS training to 10,000 active duty service members who are transitioning, military Veterans, and spouses through our AWS Educate program, offering them a path to AWS certification. Members can enjoy benefits like AWS Promotional Credits, access to a cloud job board, and more. Check out AWS Educate for Veterans.

AWS Educate aims to positively impact workforce development and create hundreds of thousands of AWS evangelists. Naval Commander Robert Clarady, an AWS Educate member and transitioning service member, shares his story.

Read more AWS Educate success stories.

Workforce transition: Military Apprenticeship Program

The Amazon Apprenticeship initiative is an upskilling program that trains military spouses and Veterans for in-demand roles like cloud computing. More than 500 Veterans and military spouses have taken advantage of this program and are moving towards becoming full-time Amazonians. AWS offers apprenticeship programs for data center techs, professional services consultants, and account management team members in Dallas, Seattle, Hawaii, New York, Herndon, and other places around the US.

The Amazon Web Services Professional Services Military Apprenticeship Program (MAP) is designed to enable Veterans and Veterans’ spouses who align with the Amazon culture to gain education, training, and experience required to join the AWS Professional Services team. The program provides participants with 13-weeks of accredited education focused on cloud foundations through Northern Virginia Community College in addition to several months of instructor-led training, on-the-job training, as well as technical and career mentoring and coaching to meet the minimum requirements and successfully obtain Linux+ certification and demonstrate competency as an AWS Certified Solutions Architect by passing the certification exam. The MAP is managed in conjunction with the US Department of Labor.

Since the AWS MAP program began, it has graduated three cohorts of Professional Services Consultants, with another cohort currently underway and another to start in March 2020. Learn more about the Amazon Web Services Professional Services Military Apprenticeship Program (MAP).

Learn what AWS is doing with the Department of Veterans Affairs

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is enabling key components of their IT modernization strategy by migrating critical enterprise workloads to AWS GovCloud (US). David Catanoso, Director of Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office at VA, explained how the VA has built cloud-based customer relationship management tools to improve communication with constituents. By using the cloud to implement emerging technology, the VA can offer Veterans more individualized support at scale.

“We’re approaching 3.5 petabytes already into Amazon Web Services … We’re trying things like using AI for chatbots on our IT Service Desk and considering using things like machine learning to help with diagnosis by interpreting images,” Catanoso said.

Watch the video from the AWS Public Sector Summit 2019 in Washington, DC and don’t miss the VA at re:Invent 2019 in Las Vegas at the AWS Worldwide Public Sector Breakfast.