AWS Training and Certification Blog
Launch your cloud career with the AWS Cloud Support Associate Certificate
Are you looking to break into the growing field of cloud computing? Prepare for an exciting new career with Amazon Web Services’ latest entry-level professional certificate on Coursera, the AWS Cloud Support Associate Professional Certificate.
In this seven-course online training program, you’ll gain the foundational skills needed to launch a career as an AWS Cloud Support Associate. With cloud computing reshaping businesses across every industry, this role is in high demand as companies migrate their applications and infrastructure to the cloud.
What is an AWS Cloud Support Associate?
An AWS Cloud Support Associate is a dedicated and disciplined technical expert and plays a crucial role in delivering an exemplary customer experience, ensuring customers receive timely and accurate help with workloads that are deployed to the AWS Cloud, while minimizing disruptions and downtime. Primary responsibilities include:
- Main point of contact for support: An AWS Cloud Support Associate is the initial point of contact for customers seeking support, addressing their inquiries, troubleshooting issues, and providing guidance on best practices to optimize their solutions hosted on AWS.
- Problem solver: Using their technical expertise, an AWS Cloud Support Associate identifies and resolves complex technical challenges encountered by customers using AWS to build solutions. Possible areas of exploration include: investigating network connectivity issues, AWS service configurations, and other technical troubleshooting. An AWS Cloud Support Associate may also also participate in on-call rotations, providing prompt 24/7 support to customer problems.
- Cross-functional collaborator: An AWS Cloud Support Associate is deeply integrated and connected with other internal teams, such as engineering, operations, and product management, to identify, escalate, and solve a customer’s technical problem.
- Support Documentation leader: As a key contributor to the creation and updating of support documentation, including FAQs and knowledge base articles, the AWS Cloud Support Associate empowers customers to find the resources they need to be successful on AWS.
The AWS Cloud Support Associate Professional Certificate Program
Developed by AWS Training and Certification, this program is the catalyst to become job-ready as an AWS Cloud Support Associate in just four months or less. No prior degree or cloud experience is required. Through a seven-course curriculum with over 18 hands-on labs, you’ll build practical, transferable skills using the AWS Management Console. You’ll learn to:
- Analyze customer feedback to improve cloud services
- Master troubleshooting for custom solutions
- Develop strategies for clear customer communication
- Implement processes to efficiently track and prioritize incidents
The program features real-world insights from experienced AWS Cloud Support Engineers who share their expertise, best practices, and advice for navigating challenges in this dynamic role. Upon completing the program, you’ll earn an employer-recognized Professional Certificate from AWS.
In start-to-finish order, the seven courses in the curriculum are:
- Introduction to Information Technology and AWS Cloud: This course is designed to give learners enough technical context to understand how to build solutions in the cloud, even if you’re starting with zero technical knowledge. Before diving into the cloud, we will cover the basics of how computers work (including software and operating systems), an introduction to information technology, the basics of modern IT infrastructure, and the cloud careers that will be increasingly in-demand.
- AWS Cloud Technical Essentials: This course is also aimed at providing foundational knowledge of cloud computing and AWS services, building upon the prior course. You’ll build highly available, scalable, and cost effective application step-by-step. Upon course completion, you will be able to make an informed decision about when and how to apply core AWS services for compute, storage, and database to different use cases.
- Skills and Best Practices for Cloud Support Associates: In this course, you’ll be introduced to specific non-technical topics for the Support Associate role. The instructors will present Cloud Support Associate best practices, how tools such as automation and generative AI can help, troubleshooting methodologies, how cloud workloads change the approach to support, root cause analysis processes, post-mortem writing skills, the differences between traditional customer support and cloud customer support, and how to be your customers’ trusted technical and business advisor.
- Cloud Support Essentials – A Technical Approach: This course focuses on building the skills you need to get started with the Command Line Interface (CLI). It covers basic navigation, program installation, reading logs, and troubleshooting issues. You’ll also dive into network troubleshooting and common AWS scenarios that you may encounter as a Cloud Support Associate.
- Automation in the AWS Cloud: The course kicks off by introducing automation in the cloud, comparing the differences between on-premises and cloud. You’ll learn why automation is so powerful and get hands-on by working with AWS CLI. Week one closes with automation with scripting by sharing examples of how automation helps and the benefits of using scripts. A focus on automation isn’t complete with an overview of infrastructure-as-code. You’ll get introduced to provisioning and configuration management and solve an automation problem with AWS CloudFormation.
- Python for Serverless Applications and Automation on AWS: This course gives you a basic introduction to the Python programming language. You’ll start by learning the definition of Python, its history, semantics, and how it works. The first week concludes by writing a Python script to solve a problem. In week two, you’ll learn about serverless architectures and understand the differences between microservices, service-oriented, and monolith architectures. You’ll build a microservices architecture by learning how to use AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and AWS Cloud9. It’s then time to learn how to integrate applications with AWS Databases. Finally you’ll learn how to host a simple Python automation script using AWS Systems Manager.
- Capstone: Preparing to work as a Cloud Support Associate: This course helps you prepare to work as a support agent in organizations with AWS environments. We will start with some review of previous topics covered in the series, with specific attention paid toward debugging and troubleshooting. You’ll then move into concepts around interacting with customers to obtain information and progress towards a solution.
Get started today
Don’t wait. Enroll now in the AWS Cloud Support Associate Professional Certificate program on Coursera for only $49/month. With flexible learning designed to fit your schedule, you’ll secure the job-ready skills to transition into a rewarding career as an AWS Cloud Support Associate in four months or less.