Are you exploring your different options for AWS careers? Spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will more than double to approximately $500 billion by 2023, according to data from IDC. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 22 percent. The main areas of investment in the public cloud for this five-year window of high growth will be:
- Professional services (25.6%)
- Telecommunications (24.1%)
- Retail (23.7%)
- Resource industries (23.3%)
- Personal and consumer services (23.1%)
If you follow the money, you’ll see that a career in the public cloud has a very bright future. Of course, following the numbers isn’t enough reason to choose AWS as a career path. If you feel trapped in your current IT profession and are looking for a new career path, for instance, then you need to select the right career path for the right reasons. In this article, we will provide you with some useful information that will help you decide whether an AWS career is a good move for you.
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Whether you’re already an experienced IT professional seeking to take your career in a new direction or new to cloud computing (or IT, for that matter), there are several reasons why you should consider AWS. Here are a few of the more important ones.
Why AWS?
AWS Is the #1 Public Cloud Platform
AWS leads the pack when it comes to public cloud computing. If you consider IaaS (infrastructure as a service)—just one segment of the public cloud market—AWS quickly leads the market. Statista states that AWS holds about 33 percent of the IaaS market segment, which is almost as much as the next two leading providers combined (Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform) hold. Furthermore, the AWS market share shows signs of enormous growth in other areas besides IaaS, as the total IaaS market is less than half of the SaaS (software as a service) market.
AWS Is the #1 Fastest-Growing Public Cloud
Being the first public cloud service to market in 2006, AWS had a seven-year headstart over its competition. AWS took maximum advantage of this lead and has been the fastest-growing public cloud service ever since. It continues to show tremendous growth, such as 39 percent growth in its third-quarter in 2021.
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Demand for AWS Jobs Outstrips Available Professionals
In the public cloud job market, there are between six to 12 times more job postings available than there are job seekers, and 60 percent of these job postings are AWS-related. Employers in the United States, for example, say that it’s quite a challenge finding professionals with cloud computing skills in general. This imbalance will continue to be the case for a long time to come.
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Proficiency in Cloud Computing Is a Necessity for IT Professionals
More widespread utilization of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the cloud is projected to be a trend that continues well into and beyond 2022. Furthermore, about 50 percent of IT professionals have confidence that AI and machine learning will play an enormous role in the adoption of cloud computing. Since AWS is the leading public cloud computing service that is widely adopted by organizations both large and small, then it also reasons that learning AWS has become a necessity for IT professionals who want to secure their future careers.
How to Learn AWS
Now that you have some solid reasons why an AWS career can be beneficial, the next step is to find out how you can go about acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, and certifications for AWS.
There is an Abundance of AWS Learning Resources: Choose Wisely
Since AWS certifications were first introduced in 2013, numerous resources have been made available, ranging from books, manuals, courses, AWS practice exams, and AWS communities. These resources are all useful for those seeking to start and grow their careers in AWS. However, choosing the right learning resource is critical. There is a lot to go through, and some courses are simply better than others.
Other considerations include budget, available time, proximity to quality material, etc. Most people would agree that the best and most accessible way to learn AWS is by taking a well-recognized and reliable course offered by a reputable institution with experienced tutors.
Acquire AWS Certification
After going through all of the material that you need, it’s also essential to attain AWS certification. AWS certification validates your expertise and credibility, putting you in a position to get the job that you seek in an organization where you want to be. AWS certifications tell employers that you have undergone rigorous AWS training and will be capable of implementing what you have learned on the job.
Furthermore, AWS certification gives you access to the AWS Partner Network, which allows professionals and their organizations access to high-quality technical, business, sales, and marketing resources and training materials from Amazon.
Choose a Career Path that Suits You Best
There are a lot of AWS career paths from which you can choose. The career path you want can be based on either:
- The Role: Such as cloud practitioner, operations, architect, and developer
- The Solution: Such as storage, machine learning, and AWS media services
You could also choose a specialty area on which to focus your attention and validate advanced skills in specific technical domains. These specialty areas include advanced networking, big data, and security. Read on to find more details on the certifications that you could acquire for your AWS career.
Available AWS Certifications
In short, AWS careers and certifications are officially divided into four categories, including Foundational, Associate, Professional, and Specialty. Under these four categories, there are a total of nine certifications covering different roles as follows:
1. AWS Foundational Level Certification (1 certification)
- Certification: AWS Cloud Practitioner – Foundational
- Scope: Introduction and basic level understanding of cloud computing including a basic understanding of how AWS works
2. AWS Associate Level Certifications (3 certifications)
- Certifications:
- AWS Solutions Architect – Associate
- AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- Scope: A Deeper understanding of AWS architecture, development, and operations
3. AWS Professional Level Certifications (2 certifications)
- Certifications:
- AWS Solutions Architect - Professional
- AWS DevOps Engineer - Professional
- Scope: A more in-depth understanding of AWS architecture and engineering
4. AWS Specialty Certifications (3 certifications)
- Certifications:
- Advanced Networking - Specialty
- Security - Specialty
- Big Data - Specialty
- Scope: A detailed understanding of specialty areas related to AWS
Best Paying AWS-Jobs Based on Certification and Job Type
According to the compensation analytics company Payscale, the average annual salary for a professional in the USA with the Amazon Web Services skill set is USD 108,000/-. This makes AWS certification the highest paying IT certification in North America. Based on the same survey, depending on whether the accreditation acquired is associate level or professional level, the top five AWS jobs and their corresponding salaries are as follows.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect
The job requires these candidates to understand and do the following:
- The building, architecting, and maintaining of cost-efficient, scalable, and highly available AWS cloud environments
- Keep up to date with cloud computing and recommend the latest AWS toolsets
After training as an AWS Solutions Architect Associate, AWS freshers can earn up to $130,883 at the associate level and up to $148,456 at the professional level.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
The job requires the following:
- Candidates should proficiently design AWS solutions that positively impact business
- Implement and maintain servers including patching and debugging as needed
These professionals can earn up to $137,724.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect
The job requires the following:
- Work with engineers and customers to provide technical and implementation leadership
- Ensure new technologies are successfully integrated into customer environments
AWS Certified Solutions Architect jobs can earn them up to $130,883.
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
They are responsible for:
- Provisioning, installing, configuring, operating, and maintaining systems (virtual and non-virtual), software, and other related infrastructure
- Building reporting dashboards and maintaining analytics software
AWS Certified SysOps administrator jobs pay up to $130,610.
AWS Certified Developer
AWS Developers are expected to:
- Build enterprise-level applications and software services
- Understand standard cloud orchestration tools
These professionals can earn up to $130,272.
Other jobs you can get with AWS certification skills and training
Besides these main AWS-related and Amazon careers, learning AWS will also develop diverse IT skills that allow candidates to get jobs in other areas besides Amazon or AWS-specific postings. Data shows some of the top-paying IT certifications that AWS professionals may have access to based on their AWS skill set include:
AWS Skill Salary
- DynamoDB $141,813
- Elastic MapReduce (EMR) $136,250
- CloudFormation $132,308
- Elastic Cache $125,625
- CloudWatch $121,980
- Lambda $121,481
- Kinesis $121,429
- Key Management Service $117,297
- Elastic Beanstalk $114,219
- Redshift $113,950
Future-Proof Your Career With AWS Certification
If you’re a cloud computing enthusiast, AWS certification training is a good move to grow your career. Not only are there a lot of available opportunities, but there are also many ways you can fit into the IT work environment with the skills that you will learn. A reputable AWS course, like the AWS Solutions Architect Certification Training Course, can help you to boost your employability, increase your salary, prove your commitment to the profession, and open doors for new opportunities in diverse areas in the IT world.
