Top Amazon Certifications

If you want to improve your technical knowledge and Cloud expertise and become a certified specialist, Amazon offers to opt for its certification program to validate your skills. With the help of the program of this vendor, the interested individuals can earn the industry-recognized certificates and highlight the in-demand skills. It also helps the organizations build effective and innovative teams for the Cloud initiatives with the use of Amazon Web Services.

The Amazon certification program contains the paths that are specifically designed to empower the individuals and teams to meet their unique goals. From Cloud Practitioners to DevOps Engineers, Amazon provides you with all the needed skills that you will need for your role.

Amazon Certification Program Overview

The Amazon certification program has a wide range of options and you can find the path that you need for your level of expertise to solidify it or evolve into a more advanced one. Each track covers a certain set of skills that you need to possess and offers you to take the particular exams to verify them. All in all, the program provides all the interested candidates with several levels and they are the following:

1. Foundational-Level Certifications

This track offers only one certificate, which is known as Amazon AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. This is the path that you can begin your journey with to validate your Cloud fluency as well as foundational AWS knowledge. It is intended for anyone who has basic knowledge of the AWS platform. Amazon CLF-C01 is a qualification exam for this certification and contains 65 questions that should be cleared within 90 minutes. To be eligible for the test, it is recommended that the students have at least 6 months of the fundamental industry and AWS Cloud knowledge. Also, they should possess some basic understanding of IT services, their uses in the AWS Cloud platform, as well as solid knowledge of core AWS services and their use cases.

2. Associate-Level Certifications

This track is more popular among the individuals interested in the program of this vendor. The certifications that are offered at this level prove that the candidates who obtained them are able to perform more complex tasks and can learn new skills faster. It is required to have a year or more of experience solving problems as well as working with solutions and use AWS Cloud. All in all, you can choose to go for one of the following certification paths:

• Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

  Amazon SAA-C02 is the only exam that one needs to pass to obtain the certification. It is recommended that the learners know how to design cost-efficient, available, scalable, and fault-tolerant distributed systems on AWS to be eligible for the qualification test. The exam has 65 questions, which you need to complete within 130 minutes. The content of the test covers the details of various architectures, including the Cost-Optimized, High-Performing, and Resilient ones. You should also know how to secure them along with the apps.

• Amazon AWS Certified Developer – Associate

  This path validates your knowledge of the deployment, monitoring, development with AWS Services, troubleshooting, refactoring, and security. It shows that you have all the necessary skills to implement the Cloud initiatives and have proficiency in developing, deploying, as well as debugging the Cloud-based applications on AWS. To get this certification, you have to pass the Amazon DVA-C01 exam. You will have 130 minutes to deal with 65 questions.

• Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

  If you want to demonstrate your skills in deploying, operating, and managing workloads on AWS, you can go for this certificate. Having it on your resume proves that you know about networking and content delivery, reliability and business continuity, as well as security and compliance. In order to get certified, a potential candidate needs to take the Amazon SOA-C02 exam. The test consists of 65 questions and offers you 180 minutes to answer them.

3. Professional-Level Certifications

The next track is for the seasoned IT professionals who want to validate their skills or gain them. There are two options that you can go for to improve and verify your skills and knowledge. The potential candidates should have at least 2 years of comprehensive experience designing, troubleshooting, and operating solutions as well as using AWS Cloud to be eligible for any of these paths. If you have this level of expertise, you can choose one of the following certifications:

• Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

  This is a professional-level variant of the option from the Associate level. It is ideal for those who have completed the previous track and want to enhance their knowledge and skills. It is intended for those Solutions Architects who have already worked two or more years operating and managing systems on AWS. Amazon SAP-C01 is a qualification exam of this path and contains 75 questions that should be cleared within 180 minutes. The test evaluates your knowledge of continuous improvement, cost control, migration planning, as well as design for new solutions and organizational complexity.

• Amazon AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

  If you are a DevOps Engineer who wants to validate their knowledge or a person who wants to become one and get all the needed skills, you can consider this path as an option. It evaluates your knowledge of High Availability, Monitoring and Logging, SDLC Automation, Disaster Recover, Infrastructure as Code, and so on. Amazon DOP-C01 is a qualification exam for this path, and you need to be ready for 75 questions that have to be completed within 180 minutes.

4. Specialty-Level Certifications

The certifications from this track evaluate the special skills that you may need while performing the tasks required for your job role. There are several options, and each of them covers various sectors and has different requirements. Thus, you can choose from the following certificates:

• Amazon AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

  This path is ideal for those individuals who perform complex networking tasks. It helps you become sure that you know everything required and are able to design and maintain network architecture for all AWS services. It is recommended that you possess five or more years of hands-on experience architecting and implementing network solutions. The Amazon ANS-C00 exam is the one you need to pass to become a certified specialist.

• Amazon AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty

  As for this path, it validates your skills in designing, building, maintaining, and securing analytics solutions on AWS. The potential candidates for this option are the individuals who have more than 2 years of hands-on experience working with AWS as well as 5 years of experience with data analytics technologies. The Amazon DAS-C01 test will measure your knowledge of analysis, visualization, storage and data management, collection, security, and processing.

• Amazon AWS Certified Security – Specialty

  If you perform a security role with 2 or more years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads, you can take the Amazon SCS-C01 exam and earn this certificate. The path evaluates your knowledge of data protection, logging, incident response, monitoring, infrastructure security, as well as identity and access management. It is recommended that the learners have 2 years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads and 5 years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions.

• Amazon AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty

  Those individuals who perform a development or data science role can go for this path. It validates their ability to design, deploy, maintain, and implement machine learning solutions for the given business problems. About 2 years of experience developing, architecting, and running ML/deep learning workloads on AWS Cloud will be enough to understand the concepts covered in the qualification exam. The test that you need to pass is known as Amazon MLS-C01.

• Amazon AWS Certified Database – Specialty

  The last available option proves that you have the skills in designing, recommending, as well as maintaining optimal AWS database solutions. This means that you know how to improve performance, enable innovation, and reduce costs. Passing the Amazon DBS-C01 exam validates all of the skills you need. To be eligible for it, you should have 2 years of hands-on experience working on AWS and 5 years of working with database technologies.

Preparation Options

The amount of available resources for the Amazon AWS certification exams is endless, because both the official website of the vendor as well as various third-party sources offer many options. Thus, you can find sample questions, subscription with the weekly exam tips, and exam readiness webinars on the Amazon platform. Besides that, you can find the following materials:

• Digital training;
• AWS technical documentation;
• Exam guides;
• Practice tests.

Some of the options are free, while you need to pay for others. Combining these resources with the ones that are recommended on other training websites can help you succeed in your certification test.

Career Opportunities

Passing an Amazon exam brings you closer to a certificate that can greatly boost your career. With the certifications from this vendor, you can earn a better salary, expect a promotion, or even find a new job. Thus, you can expect your income to be from about $87,000 to $146,000 per year, depending on your job role. The positions that you can opt for include a Cloud Engineer, an AWS Cloud Architect, a Cloud Security Architect, a Staff Cloud Solutions Engineer, an AWS/Application Analyst, a Solutions Architect, a Sr. Data Architect, an AWS DevOps Engineer, and so on.