From Zero to AWS Solutions Architect Professional In 7 Months: A Frontend Perspective

Do you know that feeling of being lost in the AWS console? I remember exactly how intimidated I felt when forced to do anything there – even the simplest things. And it wasn’t that long ago. So how did I end up with their Pro certificate and all three associates in just seven months? More importantly, was it worth it for a frontend dev?

What is AWS and their Solutions Architect Professional?#

A quick primer for folks who aren’t familiar with cloud.

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services. They’re among the most popular cloud service providers, alongside Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. Like other cloud companies, they run a certification program to help people develop and demonstrate their expertise.

For AWS, there are three main certification categories:

• Basic (Cloud Practitioner)
• Associate
• Professional

These certifications progress from easiest to hardest and cover a wide variety of AWS products and services – from networking and storage to databases, serverless computing, edge locations, ML/AI, and more.

There are also Specialty certificates that focus on specific areas like databases or security.

Every certification requires passing a proctored exam, with each level becoming significantly more challenging.

The Professional exam takes 3 hours and contains 75 multiple-choice questions. It costs $300 to take, and you need to score at least 750 out of 1000 to pass.

I eventually earned five certifications: Cloud Practitioner, Developer Associate, Solutions Architect Associate, SysOps Admin Associate, and finally, the Solutions Architect Professional.

Why The Hell Did You Do That as a Frontend Developer?#

This is a question I get asked a lot, and it’s totally reasonable.

As frontend developers we often underestimate the extent to which we interact with cloud services on a daily basis. Services like S3, CloudFront, EC2, Route53, ECR/ECS, are impacting our work more than we realize. More so, many 3rd party services we use are built on top of AWS, like Vercel functions for example.

I guess we may agree on the fact this knowledge is typically associated more with platform and backend development. So why I still decided to invest significant time and effort into learning it.

My Backstory#

As I mentioned in the introduction, AWS intimidated me. Every time I needed to do something in their console, I panicked. It wasn’t intuitive, and I was scared of making mistakes (which I still think was perfectly reasonable). I didn’t like that feeling and that was my initial spark.

Fortunately, the company I worked for at the time was pursuing Advanced tier of partnership with AWS, which required a significant number of employees to obtain certifications at different levels. That created an opportunity to build qualifications, and I didn’t hesitate to jump in fully.

Although I initially planned to get only the Cloud Practitioner and maybe the Solutions Architect Associate or Developer certifications, I became completely hooked.

The Benefits#

We all live in knowledge bubbles, shaped by our particular interests (like frontend in my case) and how social media serves us content nowadays. This makes our focus very narrow.

Even now, when trying to write about software engineering, I feel intimidated because I realize how little I know about the whole process (and how much I don’t know about things I don’t know).

Delving into AWS has broadened my understanding of software engineering, highlighting the importance of a more comprehensive approach in our roles as developers.

And this is precisely where preparing for certifications brought the biggest benefits. It made me think more holistically about delivering value to end users by making me aware of all the things necessary to shape the final experience right.

For us frontend developers, it’s very easy to focus on day-to-day tasks – building beautiful and performant UIs, handling state efficiently, creating components that align with industry best practices, and of course, chasing new frameworks that seem to pop up around every corner.

However, nowadays this isn’t enough, especially when AI’s growth drastically impacts our industry and permanently changes how we work.

Looking ahead, I foresee the evolution of frontend developers into technical user experience advocates, actively shaping product discovery, design, implementation, and performance strategies..

And by experience, I mean something truly comprehensive – from active participation in initial product discovery, through design and implementation, to shaping performance. This includes not just standard optimization techniques, but also infrastructure considerations: how the app is served to users, where it’s stored, the role of edge locations and how to utilize them properly, and much more.

But how does this translate to “hard” skills? I’m glad you asked.

What I learned#

Here are some key insights I discovered during my AWS learning journey:

• Permissions and roles - this was black magic to me before. And honestly, it still is, just a bit less mysterious now ;)
• Basics of tech and cloud, including encryption, networking, global infrastructure, infrastructure as code, and much more
• Understanding different approaches to implementing scalability, high availability, and resilience
• Cloud Service Models differences including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Function as a Service (FaaS), Container as a Service (CaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS) and how they relate to pricing
• Different ways to serve a website/application, from S3 bucket and EC2, through Beanstalk, up to ECS and Fargate
• The role of CDN and edge locations in building websites that perform well around the globe
• Super simple and cheap stack of serving static sites or SPAs via S3 and CloudFront
• How DNS works, what’s the role of zones, and how different records are used to configure the domain
• How you can use Lambdas to build basically everything – from simple, single-purpose functions to run on demand, up to a performant and scalable API with help of API Gateway, or multi-staged workflows
• What are different types of storage services and when to use them
• How to debug and monitor your applications using CloudWatch, X-Ray, and other tools
• How to secure your applications and data, including encryption, key management, and best practices
• How queues and messaging services work and how to use them to build scalable and resilient systems
• What are the options to build and manage databases, from simple RDS to DynamoDB, up to Redshift and Aurora

Plus of course hundreds of other concepts and ideas.

But to clarify things – definitely I’m not an expert in any of those.

For most of them I grasped the core concepts, understood the fundamentals, and learned where to find detailed information when needed. Despite having the impressive-sounding certification, I’m well aware that it’s just a starting point.

What mattered to me most was understanding the concepts and developing a problem-solving mindset using these tools (which was how the exam assessed the knowledge).

Does this make me a Professional Solutions Architect? No, but it was an excellent first step toward understanding the broader scope of software engineering.

Should You Do the Certificates?#

That’s a very fair question, and the answer is obvious: it depends.

I took advantage of being part of a company that was an AWS Partner and learned everything I could in a given period to benefit both myself and the company.

Actually, the only reason I even attempted the Professional exam was that it was part of the DevOps workshop the company sent me to. If I could take it for free, why not try, right? Otherwise, I’d probably stop at the Associate level.

Certifications serve mainly as important milestones, delineating specific knowledge boundaries and guiding our learning paths.

I find that motivating, and it helps me structure my learning better. If you are alike, then go ahead and do it! But don’t be tempted to pursue certificates just to display a fancy badge on LinkedIn or your CV. Although they look nice, based on my recruiting experience, they don’t play a significant role. And you will need to learn hell a lot to pass the exams.

Was It Worth It?#

So to sum things up. Was it worth? For me, yes, I think so.

Would I recommend doing the same for everyone. It depends.

However, I definitely recommend that every frontend developer broaden their scope of interest. Nowadays, just building working React components is no longer sufficient for career growth. A deeper understanding of general infrastructure aspects, including cloud services like AWS, is becoming increasingly essential.

Pursuing certification is one way, but not the only way, to put this approach into practice.

If you’re interested in learning how to approach these exams efficiently, I’d be happy to write a post about it. Just drop me a line on BlueSky or LinkedIn.