New training series: Starting your Career with AWS Cloud

Gaining the skills for a job in the fast-moving world of cloud computing is a wise investment. Over the past eleven years, AWS Training and Certification has trained many learners on the skills to be successful as architects, builders, and cloud operators. The race to fill cloud positions is only accelerating. Worldwide spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7% in 2023 according to Gartner, yet 95% of respondents in a recent McKinsey survey cited lack of cloud talent and capabilities as one of the biggest roadblocks they face. If you are looking for a job in the cloud and want to know what it’s like to work as an architect, operator, developer, or support associate, you’ve come to the right place.

It’s a fact: upskilling with AWS Training provides an advantage to organizations. A 2023 AWS-commissioned study from Enterprise Strategy Group revealed that among decision makers surveyed, 94% say employing staff that have taken AWS Training puts their company in a better position to succeed over the next 3-5 years. And the efficiency of learning through AWS Training is particularly relevant to organizations, as 93% agree that employing AWS Trained staff has increased their business’s confidence in executing cloud projects.

There’s never been a better time to learn about today’s in-demand cloud careers and the skills employers are looking for. The new training series, Starting your Career with AWS Cloud (available now on Coursera and edX), includes three courses and provides an overview of cloud fundamentals, describes IT and cloud computing, introduces cloud computing roles, and identifies and assesses skills to perform tasks in cloud computing roles. You’ll hear directly from AWS experts in myriad cloud roles as they share how they got into IT, what they do on a daily basis, and the questions, challenges, and opportunities they experience.

The series is designed to move you quickly from a broad, foundational understanding of the most in-demand cloud careers to learning how to build solutions and solve problems using AWS solutions. Although you can take the courses individually, I strongly recommend to watch them in order as each course builds on top of the knowledge shared in the prior.

Course #1: Introduction to AWS Cloud careers

Course #1 introduces technical roles in the AWS Cloud and explains why the public cloud computing model is the new normal. You’ll learn key terminology, the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, cloud computing models (Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud), what APIs are (and why they are important), elasticity, horizontal, and vertical scaling. Then, you’ll learn the difference between relationship, availability, and milestone-oriented IT job roles.

The course also features interviews with Amazon employees in Solutions Architect, Data Scientist, Software Developer Engineer, Systems Administrator, Security Engineer, and Customer Support Engineer roles. You’ll hear their perspectives on their day to day responsibilities, the soft skills that are key to their success, AWS services they most use in their jobs, and what they like doing outside of work.

In the screen, Oksana, an AWS Cloud Technologist shown on the left, is interviewing Mikaila, who thought she’d be a math teacher, but her path took her to computer science and she’s now a security engineer at AWS.

Course #2: AWS services overview for IT Professional

Course #2 provides a foundational understanding of AWS services. You’ll learn the basics of compute, network storage, database, monitoring, security, serverless, containers, databases, and cost optimization. In this course, you’ll learn how the services are applicable to different technical roles in cloud computing. For example: when talking about Amazon S3, we will provide perspectives from a solutions architect, a security analyst, and a data scientist about how their roles interact with the top features in their daily work. We do this for each of the other AWS services so you’ll hear the points of view of various roles! When you have enough knowledge, it’s time to start hands-on to see how things are actually implemented in the AWS Cloud, so, introducing…

Course #3: Hands-on with AWS for IT professionals

Course #3 gets hands-on by teaching you how to create a new AWS Account with an Administrative User, and explores the AWS Free Tier. You’ll follow demonstration and explainer videos walking you through how to combine AWS services to create solutions for real-life scenarios. The scenarios are grouped into three major categories: data, operations, and architecture.

In the data scenario, Raf will show how a machine learning solution automatically redacts Personal Identifiable Information (PII) when data gets retrieved from an Amazon S3 bucket. In the operations scenario, Oksana will show how to configure billing alerts, which is important to know when you are starting your cloud journey. In the architecture scenario, Alex will demonstrate the use of Amazon Virtual Private Network (VPN) to fix a network topology that needs a private subnet for sensitive workloads while embracing Multiple Availability Zones for higher resiliency.

Starting your career with AWS Cloud is now available, taught by the AWS experts. Whether you are looking for your first IT job, or wanting to upskill in your current IT role, there’s never been a better time gain the knowledge and hands-on skills to succeed in the most in-demand careers.

The series is now available on Coursera and edX for free, although it’s recommended you unlock the paid option (Coursera: $39/month for the specialization or $49/course; edX: $49/course) to gain career-amplifying access to assessments, hands-on exercises, and a shareable completion certificate that you can share with recruiters and future employers.