How to Become An AWS Certified Developer
Well who doesn’t want to advance in their career? But not many are aware of the facts that there are a plethora of certifications and trainings available online that can give the boost your career needs. The prospect for IT professionals grows many fold when they do any special certification to enhance their skill set. Amazon, known for offering everything to its consumers, is also offering a wide range of online certifications that can boost the career of any IT professional. Amazon’s cloud products are being used worldwide by many organizations and thus acquiring the technical expertise to develop, deploy and use such products in a corporate organization can benefit IT professionals in their career. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a platform that is offering everything including content delivery to migration of database and has become a one-stop solution for many companies who wish to enhance their performance and productivity.
In this article, we will cover all the things you need to know to become an AWS Certified Developer.
What is AWS certification?
Before delving into the details of how to become an AWS Certified Developer, you need to know what AWS certifications are and how such certifications that are recognized internationally by many organizations can help individuals grow their career. Should you wish to land a job related to AWS then getting AWS certification is a must. You should first of all identify your goals and what you want to achieve and the move ahead in deciding which certification will help you achieve your goal. One thing we would like to mention is that before attempting any AWS certification you should develop related skills and strengthen your foundation by getting the best training courses available at QuickStart.
Why do you need to become an AWS Certified Developer?
There are plenty of reasons why an IT professional should opt to become an AWS Certified Developer. These reasons can be personal or professionals. We will discuss the professional ones and will leave you to decide what your personal preferences are. AWS Certified Developer program helps in validating the skills of a test taker that the person has exhibited in-depth knowledge of main services of AWS, its uses, and the fundamental best practices of AWS architecture. The course also helps a person develop the ability to develop, deploy and debug AWS cloud-based applications. Amazon Web Services is the market leader in cloud-based products with 33% market share and thus getting the certification of AWS Developer will equip individual with the skillset needed to use the AWS services in a corporate environment in the best way possible.
Whether you are a developer working for a company that uses AWS services or someone with computer engineering background who wish to advance their career, becoming AWS Certified Developer will give your career the boost it needs and help you climb up the leadership ladder.
If you wish to advance your career in the field of IT and cloud computing then obtaining AWS certification is really important as it helps you to stand out among your competition and helps you land your dream job. The personal goals you may have vary but most come down to getting better compensation, joining a good organization and achieve stability in your career.
The Most Notable Benefits of Becoming AWS Certified Developer
Like any degree, certification or educational qualification, obtaining AWS Developer certification help you reap a lot of benefits. We have listed down the most important benefits of becoming AWS Certified Developer to give you a better idea what future holds for you:
AWS Certified Developers Have Huge Demand
Forbes has reported that Amazon has 33% of the cloud computing market, making it the top cloud services provider in the entire world. In fact, their share is three times more than their biggest competitor Microsoft. This fact alone is sufficient enough to explain the huge demand of AWS Certified Developers in the market. This certification will surely provide numerous benefits in the future to you as the year-on-year growth of Amazon Web Services is 43% indicating that they are soon going to dominate the cloud computing market. Just by taking into account these numbers, one can estimate how soon such certifications will become a mandatory requirement by many employers around the world. Plainly speaking the more companies using AWS the more they would need services of AWS certified professionals.
AWS Certified Developers Earn More
As per the survey conducted by Global Knowledge, the salaries of AWS certified professionals have increased as much as 26 percent. This proves our point that AWS certifications are not only going to get you career growth but also better compensation packages. The same survey revealed that the average salary of AWS Certified Developers is around $112,984. If we compare the figure with those who don’t have AWS certification it will become evident that they earn less as per Global Knowledge around $90,512. One thing we would like to mention here is that becoming AWS Certified Developer is not that easy and would require your time, efforts, energy, and commitment. Thus, the certificate is not only demonstrates that you have the required knowledge and expertise but you are also committed to excel in your career, a fact that employers value the most.
So whether you just want a pay jump or wish to steer your career in a different direction, becoming an AWS Certified Developer can surely help you.
AWS Developer Associate Certification
Having explained the importance of becoming an AWS Certified Developer, let us tell you what you will get in terms of skills and knowledge from this certification. IT professionals who earn AWS Developer Associate Certification develop the ability to write better codes, design desktop and web applications and will become expert in S3, CloudFormation, Beanstalk and more.
In the course of AWS Certified Developer, you will get exposure to basics of AWS services while getting in-depth knowledge of various developer services including: AWS Software Development Kit (SDK), Amazon Identity Access Management (IAM), CloudFormation, Cloudwatch, Command Line Interface (CLI), DynamoDB, Elastic Beanstalk, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Lambda, Route 53, Simple Notification Service (SNS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Simple Storage Service (S3), Simple Workflow Service (SWS), Snowball, and Storage Gateway. The course can be divided into three sections and you will get knowledge as you study more.
Beginner
The first part of the course will cover a huge range of AWS essential services. In the beginning you will acquire hands-on experience for developing resources like RDS databases, Virtual Private Clouds, & EC2 instances. At the end of the first part, you will acquire the ability to develop and deploy completely functional AWS application.
Intermediate
The second part of the course i.e. intermediate section, helps you in enhancing your skillset so that you can set up EC2 applications of auto-scaling, messaging with SQS & Kinesis and Route 53 domains. In the intermediate section of the course, focus has been given on programing using AWS SDK, so be prepared to do coding frequently during this section. Once done with this section, you will have great understanding about the main AWS services.
Advanced
In the advanced section of AWS Certified Developer course, focus has been given on enhancing the knowledge of the test-taker to make them an expert on AWS by covering advanced subjects. You will get to know how to build resources using monitoring distributed applications, architecting Serverless applications, and CloudFormation. Once you are done with this course, you will not only develop the ability to ace the exam but also the skills to successfully develop with AWS.
The key takeaways from this course are:
- Application messaging with SQS & Kinesis
- Using AWS Lambda to Architect Serverless applications
- Authentication and Authorization with IAM
- Using API Gateway to Build APIs
- Caching data in ElastiCache
- Using CloudFormation to Create resources
- Developing applications that are compatible with EC2
- Edging assets in CloudFront
- Monitoring application performance with CloudWatch and X-Ray
- Routing with Route 53
- Sending notifications with SNS
- Storing and retrieving assets from S3
- Storing data in DynamoDB and RDS
When you enroll in AWS Developer Associate Training program, you will be basically expanding your knowledge from the point where AWS Technical Essentials program has ended. This program will help you learn the methods of planning, designing, and deploying scalable cloud solutions utilizing Amazon Web Services. Those who have taken the earlier course will know exactly what AWS Developer Associate Training program entails, however, if you acquire fundamental knowledge about AWS services via specialized courses offered by QuickStart, you can easily comprehend all the technical aspects of AWS Associate Developer Training program.
The wide range of course offered by QuickStart include: Fundamentals of AWS – Beginner, Amazon Web Services – Intermediate, and others which will lead up to AWS Developer Certification – Associate Level.
QuickStart’s AWS Developer Certification – Associate Level is specially designed to help you learn the methods, tools, and techniques to ace the certification in first attempt.
Prerequisites:
If you have AWS Technical Essentials Certification or prior related experience with AWS services, then you should go for AWS Developer Associate Certification exam. It is also necessary to have familiarity with queuing and messaging services along with interface development techniques, should you wish to become a certified AWS Developer. The person need to have knowledge about distributed applications that are either loosely coupled or stateless. Moreover, understanding of non-relational and relational databases are also required to get AWS Developer certificate.
Job Description & Responsibilities
The primary responsibility of an AWS Certified Developer is to set up, maintain and update the web applications’ cloud infrastructure. AWS Certified Developers should have the knowledge about AWS services as well as the capability to use the best practices to ensure scalability and security of the solutions. Since, AWS Developer Associate Certificate equips an individual with the knowledge and skills required to perform development role, thus the main responsibility revolves around developing cloud infrastructure for web applications. The person taking up the role of AWS Developer should also have previous experience of development to be considered by an organization.
Sample Resume of an AWS Certified Developer
John Doe
76512 Park Avenue, Dallas, Texas
P: +1 (555) 223 4247 E: abc@gmail.com
EXPERIENCE
Dallas, Texas
Lead CLOUD COnSULTANt/ Developer
09/2015 – present
- Managing small team of developers, analysts, engineers and testers
- Driving delivery of small modules within a project
- Providing consultation in design, development and deployment of effective AWS solutions
- Responsible for technical and functional track of projects
- Providing consultation to various clients for deployment of AWS solutions
- Code implementation and automation for cloud-based applications
- Optimizing scalability and performance when required in order to meet the business goals of environment and application
- Providing advice to clients and the employer about AWS services and tools including: ACM, IAM, MFA, AWS Security Model, Encryption, & Security Groups.
- Work with clients directly in order to ensure that the cloud solutions being deployed are reliable, secure, and scalable
- Providing guidance to the team as and when necessary about developing and deploying cloud-based solutions
San Francisco, California
Senior consultant
01/2007 – 06/2010
- Designed, developed and deployed a cloud-based wireless web solution for the company
- Helped the company devise a robust five-year technology strategy that compliments the overall business strategy
- Led and managed various cloud-based projects of the company and for various clients
- Helped a client in building a cloud-based banking platform
- Created and implemented various strategic SOPs for the company as well as one of the leading supermarkets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Sr. INfrastructure architect
06/2009 – 08/2015
- Design and develop main platforms
- Using Puppet for server configuration management
- Utilizing CloudFormation for automated deployments
- Migration to Amazon Web Services of key systems from on-perm hosting
- Before cutover to AWS, testing key systems on performance, functional, & non-functional basis
- Configuration of websites’ auto-scaling platform during the time of peak traffic i.e. 20k per minute
- Identifying bottleneck and capacity planning
- Using CloudWatch and Zenoss for monitoring purposes
- Management of development and testing environments
EDUCATION
Master’s Degree in Computer Science | Stanford UNIVERSITY
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science | Stanford UNIVERSITY
SKILLS
- Excellent knowledge of programming languages including Java, Python, C++, C#, PHP
- Excellent command over data security protocols
- Excellent knowledge of Big Data principles, Big Data management and Big Data security methods
- Ability to build scalable and durable Big Data solutions
- Integrate Big Data with advanced analytics
CERTIFICATIONS
AWS Developer Certification by QuickStart
AWS Solutions Architect by QuickStart
AWS Developer Associate Certification
Common Interview Questions for an AWS Certified Developer
Having obtained AWS Developer Associate Certification, the next phase to achieve your career objectives is to start forwarding your resume to the relevant employers. But when you start sharing your resume, there’s one more thing you need to start preparing for and that is your interview. In this section we will list down common interview questions that a recruiter may ask you during the interview. The interview questions have been divided on the basis of personality assessment questions and technical knowledge assessment questions to give you a better idea of what you might have to face in an interview.
Technical Knowledge Assessment Interview Questions for AWS Certified Developer
On the basis of following questions, a recruiter may try to gauge your technical knowledge about the subject and answering every question properly will increase your chances to land the job by 70%.
- What comes to your mind when I say AWS?
- What are the elements of AWS?
- What is AMI? What is included in it?
- Can you explain the difference between Amazon S3 and EC2?
- What are the best security practices you should follow when devising a cloud-based solutions using AWS?
- Briefly convey your understanding of T2 instances?
- Tell me the usage of buffer in AWS?
- What are the most common AWS DevOps tools available and what are their benefits?
- How can you send request to Amazon S3?
Personality Assessment Questions
A recruiter may ask personality assessment questions to understand if you’re the right fit for the job or not. This is important because if a person is deemed unfit for the environment of an organization, then regardless of the technical expertise that individual possesses, recruiters don’t consider such profiles. Make sure you learn beforehand how to answer the following questions:
- Tell us about yourself?
- Why did you choose to become AWS Developer?
- If there’s a conflict in your team, how will you resolve it?
- Supposing our system crashes over the weekend, what will be the first thing you would do?
For the technical knowledge, QuickStart can help you as we offer a range of cyber security courses, certifications, and trainings related to AWS. However, for the personality development part you have to work a bit on how to tackle such questions. We do offer relevant certifications, but personality changes are something that can only happen when a person wants to change.