7 AWS Certification Learning Paths You Should Know About
What is the value of an AWS Certification?
Globally, it is a well-known fact that acquiring AWS certifications helps an individual further their careers as these certifications are designed to enhance an individual’s skillset, knowledge and qualification. In plain terms, an AWS Certifications mean that you have higher level of qualification and experience that can help an employer boost their performance and productivity. Acquiring AWS certifications has another benefit, which does not come to lime light that often i.e. higher compensation. According to Global Knowledge, AWS certified professionals on average earn over $100,000 per annum. The compensation for AWS certified professionals may get higher on the basis of their negotiation skills, organization’s compensation structure and overall skills and expertise.
It is a known fact among the IT professionals that organizations are constantly seeking individuals who have excellent cloud skills as they help in transforming a business while increasing the overall performance, productivity and profits. AWS trainings and certifications available online are of great value as Amazon has a market share of over 33% in the cloud market, making the company far ahead than its competitors including Microsoft. Since AWS platform is being used by many big corporations across the world, acquiring AWS certifications can help you boost you career as they validate your cloud skills and certify that you have the required knowledge & expertise needed by the organization.
While getting a certification is no guarantee that you’ll get a six-figure salary, but getting certified won’t cause any harm. Plus, the market trends show that the chances of getting a six-figure salary are much higher with a certification than without any specialized certification. So what are you waiting for? Let this article be your guide about 7 AWS certification learning paths that can help you achieve your career objectives. Moreover, whenever you undertake any AWS certification one thing you will surely achieve is the most-sought after technical expertise by employers. In this article, we will discuss 7 learning paths for building your AWS cloud skills.
What are learning paths and how many are there?
There are three major learning paths which are categorized on the basis of role, specialty and solution. In each major learning paths, there are certifications that help you become either a specialist, solution architect, or system operation administrators. In this article, we will discuss 7 important learning paths from these main categories in order to help you make a decision which path is best for you. Each path contains different certifications that must undertake as per your needs and career goals. It is important to mention here that you can also go for individual certifications to boost your career but following a path will help you grow faster, personally and professionally.
Cloud Practitioner - Role-based AWS Certification path
The cloud practitioner certification path is carefully designed for IT professionals who wish to develop and authenticate their overall knowledge about AWS Cloud. Ideally, the path should be taken by those professionals who are serving in the technical department of any organization. However, this role-based AWS certification path is also ideal for people in sales, management, finance, & purchasing along with people who use AWS Cloud. To become a pro cloud practitioner, you need to follow the path mentioned below i.e. to take both certifications. This will not only help you strengthen your position in the company while giving you salary increment. To become a professional AWS cloud practitioner, you should acquire the following certifications:
AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Second Edition)
This is a free digital course equips you with the fundamental knowledge of AWS cloud to help enhance your cloud skillset and make you a credible cloud practitioner. It’s a 4.5 hours digital course; you can complete it as per your pace and convenience. This course is the cornerstone of becoming AWS Cloud Practitioner as it helps you get ready for the exam.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
In the learning path of becoming an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner this course is the final destination. It provides you in-depth knowledge about AWS Cloud and validates your knowledge about AWS services. This course is recognized by the top employers of the industry and can boost your career. This course’s learning path covers four different domains including: security, cloud concepts, technology, and pricing and billing.
AWS Media Services – Solutions AWS Certification Path
The AWS Media Services path is specially designed for people who wish to acquire knowledge about the media services being offered by AWS. Moreover, the course will equip you with the right skillset you would need to create a professional quality media experience minus the time, efforts and expense. This path helps you provide a holistic media experience without spending a lot of amount on specialized equipment for videos. The learning path to master AWS Media Services is not an easy one and it requires a lot of time as well as commitment. The learning path has four different categories and in each category there are various courses you have to take. It starts from providing you the fundamental knowledge about AWS Media Services and go deep into technicalities to help develop the ability of delivering quality on-demand and live videos with video monetization workflows, storage and processing via AWS Cloud. The digital training modules in this path can be taken as per your pace and convenience.
Video Basics
The first training module in learning AWS Media Services is Video Basics, and it is recommended for the person taking this module to have knowledge about video productions. However, if you think you already have enough knowledge about the basics of video production, then you can skip this course and move to the second module. This training module includes following certifications:
AWS Elemental Foundations - Video Compression Basics
Digital | 30 mins | Free
This is a free digital course and would require 30 minutes of your time. It covers the basic information about evolution of video technology over time and how the video consumption patterns have changed. This course also provides information about some important concepts of video compression.
AWS Elemental Foundations - Video Delivery Basics
This is another free digital course and would demand you to invest 30 minutes of your time. It educates you about the streaming process of premium videos over internet and what is the association between content creators/ providers and consumers.
AWS Elemental Foundations - The Challenges of Streaming Live Video
Digital | 10 mins | Free
A very short free digital course which need only 10 minutes to finish, in this course you will learn about the major differences among on-demand videos and live streaming videos. This course will help you learn the differences while focusing on the challenges that you are likely to encounter while delivering live workflows.
Live Video
The second training module in AWS Media Services is Live Video. This training module would require you to undertake following certifications:
Introduction to AWS Media Services
This is a free 30 minutes digital course that will teach you about using AWS Media Services to deliver on-demand and live videos using the AWS Cloud based video storage, processing and monetization workflows.
Understanding Live Streaming Workflows
Understanding Live Streaming Workflows is another free digital course that would require you to invest just 10 minutes. This course will help you learn the mechanism of AWS Elemental MediaLive, which is a service for video processing that allow a person to encode high-quality live video streams that can be broadcasted on televisions as well as on multiscreen devices.
Building a Live Video Channel with MediaLive, MediaPackage and CloudFront
In this 50-minute digital course, you will learn about creating workflows for live video streaming using various AWS Media Services. In this course, you will learn to use Amazon CloudFront, AWS Elemental MediaPackage, and AWS Elemental MediaLive.
Video Monetization
The third training module of Video Monetization in AWS Media Services allows you to understand how you can monetize your videos. This module would require you to undertake following certifications:
Introduction to AWS Media Services
This free 30-minute digital course was also part of the second training module, so if you’ve already completed that there is no need for you to take this course. In this course, you will learn about using AWS Media Services to deliver on-demand and live videos using the AWS Cloud based video storage, processing and monetization workflows.
Understanding Monetization Workflows
This is a free digital course that would take 20 minutes of our life but in return will equip you the knowledge to monetize your live video content. It helps you do that by educating you about how to set up server-side ad insertion using Amazon CloudFront, AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaTailor, and AWS Elemental MediaPackage.
Introduction to AWS Elemental MediaTailor
In this free digital course, you will learn the basics about AWS Elemental MediaTailor. This course is free but carefully designed to help you understand the monetization and personalization services, which allows you to show your videos with targeted ads. The best part about this course is you can always maintain broadcast level quality of videos.
Video-on-Demand
The fourth training module would require you to undergo following trainings.
Video on Demand with AWS Elemental MediaConvert
This is a 50 minutes digital course that covers the usage of AWS Elemental MediaConvert for developing workflows for video on demand (VOD), which can easily convert videos stored in Amazon S3 into the latest formats so that they can be reused, stored or delivered.
Understanding Video-on-Demand (VOD) Workflows
This 20 minutes digital course is free and helps you set up streaming workflows for VOD using various AWS Services including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), AWS Lambda and AWS Elemental MediaConvert.
Introduction to AWS Elemental MediaConvert
Digital | 10 mins | Free
In this 10 minutes free digital course you will learn to use AWS Elemental MediaConvert for converting any content library size to transcode with ease on-demand videos for multiscreen delivery and broadcast.
AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty AWS Certification path
This learning path is designed to validate a person’s skills in Advanced Networking. You should take the following courses to earn the AWS Advanced Networking Certification.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
This digital course is 1.5 hours long and allows people to develop a great understanding of AWS Cloud along with the technical skills mentioned above. If you’ve already taken this course, then you can choose not to retake it and move ahead to the next certification.
Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty
This one-day virtual classroom format workshop helps you prepare for the exam that will confirm that you have acquired advanced level technical knowledge and excellent skills in developing, designing and implementing AWS and hybrid IT network infrastructure at scale.
AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty
This certification is related to the previous one and equips you with in-depth knowledge that allows you to design and implement AWS and hybrid IT network infrastructure at scale.
AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty AWS Certification Path
In this learning path of becoming an AWS Certified Big Data Engineer, you have to undertake the following courses, trainings, labs and exams:
Big Data Technology Fundamentals Online
Digital| 1.5 hours
This digital course would require 1.5 hours and will teach you about Big Data as well as possible use of cases, value and basic architecture. In this course, you will learn about some important technologies including Amazon EMR, Apache Hadoop, Apache Pig, and Apache Hive.
Big Data on AWS
This 3-day virtual classroom course is designed for data scientists, solutions architect and any person with an interest in designing, developing, and implementing cloud-based Big Data solutions. In this course, you will learn to work with all the platforms of AWS Big Data platforms which can be used for data processing and creating Big Data environments including Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), and Amazon Redshift.
Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Big Data - Specialty
This 1-day virtual classroom workshop will prepare you for the AWS Big Data - Specialty exam. It will help you develop in-depth knowledge about various use cases driven by data. This course is the last in the learning path and will help you become an AWS Certified Big Data – Specialist.
AWS Certified Security – Specialty AWS Certification path
This course is designed to validate the test-taker’s skills in designing and implementing security solutions using AWS data protection mechanism. The person will develop an understanding of AWS security services as well as knowledge of secure internet protocols. This course is ideal for people with hands-on experience in a security role. To acquire the specialty certification you have to complete following courses, labs, or exams:
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
The course details have already been discussed above and you don’t have to take this course again, if you’ve already completed it.
AWS Security Fundamentals
You can complete this 4-hour digital course at your pace and it will equip you with the basic cloud computing knowledge and AWS security concepts including AWS access management and control, logging, governance, and encryption techniques.
Security Engineering on AWS
In this 3-day virtual classroom course, you will learn to effectively use AWS security services in order to stay secure in AWS Cloud. This course will also provide you knowledge about major AWS services including compute, storage, database and networking.
AWS Machine Learning – Solution AWS Certification Path
This is one of the most-sought after AWS certification and it uses machine learning curriculum that Amazon uses to train its team of data scientists and developers. To become a professional machine learning expert and give your career a boost, we recommend you to take all the courses being offered by Amazon. However, in this learning path we will only discuss a few featured machine learning courses since the total number of courses being offered by Amazon for machine learning are 30+. Becoming AWS Certified Machine Learning expert will equip you with the knowledge to apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning in a way that benefits your employer or organization.
Featured Machine Learning Courses
AWS DeepRacer: Driven by Reinforcement Learning
This course is designed to help in the development of necessary machine learning skills via building, training and deploying models.
Machine Learning for Business Challenges
In this course, you will learn how to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in a way that new opportunities for you organizations can be identified or created. The course specifically equips you with the right skillset you would need to apply machine learning in your organization.
Math for Machine Learning
Machine learning is the way to the future and this course helps you understand various mathematical models, which are necessary for modern machine learning.
The Elements of Data Science
In this course, you will dig deeper about the science behind artificial intelligence and machine learning. The course will cover problem formulation, feature engineering, model training, tuning and debugging, exploratory data analysis, along with evaluation and production.
Building a Dynamic Conversational Bot
In this course you will learn about using Amazon Lex to implement business intelligence (BI) chatbot utilizing text or speech.
Developer Learning Path – Role-based AWS Certification Path
This learning path is specifically for software developers who wish to develop cloud applications using AWS. By completing the following courses, labs, trainings and exam, you can build your technical skills and can become a certified AWS Developer. Even in the AWS Developer Learning Path there are two sub-paths including Developer Associate Path and Developer Professional Path. We recommend you start with the associate one and move up to finish the professional one in order to grow personally and professionally.
Developer Associate Path
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
The course offers in-depth knowledge about AWS Cloud and validates your knowledge about AWS services. This course is recognized by the top employers of the industry and can boost your career. This course’s learning path covers four different domains including: security, cloud concepts, technology, and pricing and billing.
AWS Technical Essentials
In this 1-day virtual classroom course, you will learn the basics of AWS services, which will enable you to make sound business decisions as per your employer’s/ organization’s requirements.
Developing on AWS
In this 3-day virtual classroom course, you will be learn the usage of AWS SDK in order to develop secure, reliable and scalable AWS Cloud solutions. The course will cover interaction with AWS codes, main concepts, tips for troubleshooting and the best practices. At the end of the course, you will be able to develop secure cloud applications on AWS.
Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Developer - Associate
In this 4-hour virtual classroom workshop, you will understand what is required to ace the exam.
Developer Professional Path
AWS Certified Developer - Associate
In this exam, you knowledge about main AWS services, architecture and best practices will be tested. To become a pro, you first need to become an associate.
DevOps Engineering on AWS
In this 3-day virtual classroom course, you will be exposed to common practices in DevOps, which are necessary to design, develop, deploy and sustain AWS applications.
Exam Readiness: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional
This 1-day virtual classroom will help you prepare for the final exam that will certify that you are a professional now.
Conclusion
We hope that now you have adequate information about 7 important AWS Certification Learning Paths that you can take to further your career. To help you in achieving what you wish for, browse QuickStart’s wide range of AWS trainings, courses, classes, & certifications online as our experts are already AWS certified professionals who tried to make things much simpler so that you can get the right skills and knowledge you seek and need.