To Our Veterans, Thank You for Your Service

AWS is committed to helping address high rates of veteran unemployment through our partnership with government and veterans’ organizations. We, along with other divisions of Amazon, have created a number of programs focused on providing employment resources, educational access, and wellness programs aimed at helping veterans transition after their years of service.

Our commitment

• Amazon’s Military Commitment: Amazon has committed to hiring 25,000 military veterans and spouses, a number of whom will join us in AWS, by 2021. Additionally, we committed to providing AWS training to 10,000 active duty service members, military veterans and spouses through our AWS Educate program, offering them a path to AWS certification.
• The Amazon Technical Apprenticeship Program: The Amazon Technical Apprenticeship Program creates pathways to careers in cloud computing for military veterans. Next week, the Amazon Veteran Technical Apprenticeship program will be hosting our first East Coast graduation event on November 15. We’ll be joined by Governor Northam of Virginia for the event, which is during National Apprenticeship Week. Learn more about the program here.
• AWS Educate supports CyberVetsUSA: CyberVetsUSA is a complimentary cybersecurity training program for eligible veterans, transitioning service members, military spouses, and members of the Reserves and National Guard who are interested in pursuing a cybersecurity career. AWS contributes its AWS Educate self-paced, online cyber-related training content at no cost to the participants. Initially, the initiative worked with our veterans in Virginia, and is now expanding to support veterans in Maryland and North Carolina. For more information, visit cs.co/CyberVetsUSA, or email cybervets@cisco.com.

Although Amazon made a public commitment to hire and train military veterans and spouses, our dedication to those who have served goes further. Our customers and partners are using the cloud to reach our veterans.

Our customers and partners are all in, too

Code of Support Foundation (COSF) developed PATRIOTlink®, a cloud-based resource navigation platform for service members by service members. PATRIOTlink provides its users access to over 1,186 mental health care services, with an additional 383 resources serving as retreats, sanctuaries, or other ways for veterans and their families to pause, heal, and learn how to thrive in the next phase of their lives. For COSF, technology is the connective tissue that enables them to scale their efforts and reach an increasingly tech-dependent demographic right where they are – online.

Similarly, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides patient care and federal benefits to Veterans and their dependents. The U.S. Digital Service team at VA looked across VA’s many products from the point of view of the Veteran. Vets.gov now runs on AWS and was the first product approved at VA to run in production on any commercial cloud provider. The team talks to Veterans in research sessions, defines what needs to be built, builds it, ships it, and iterates. Vets.gov sees more than 1.5 million visits per month, as well as massively increased uptime and an improved user experience relative to previous VA sites.

Through our programs and extensive customer and partner network, we work to deliver on our commitment and invest in our servicemen and women.

One Amazonian’s story

Hear first-hand what it is like to serve and join the Amazon family. In this interview with AWS employee, Jason Zeruto, we dive deep into his transition from 20 years in the U.S. Army to a career in big tech, what it means to take a bite of humble pie, and what his “day one” felt like in the corporate world. Grab your headphones and listen to the podcast.

To our veterans, today and every day, we thank you for your service.