AWS Roadmap

Level: Intermediate

How to follow this roadmap

  1. Set up a personal AWS account with billing alerts before anything else. Cost-of-mistakes is a real teacher and a real risk — bound it intentionally with a low limit.
  2. Master the foundational services first — EC2, S3, IAM, VPC. These four are the substrate everything else builds on. Get hands-on with each via the console, then via CLI/Terraform.
  3. Earn AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) for breadth, then Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) for depth. CCP is optional but cheap and helpful; SAA is the canonical AWS cert.
  4. Specialize once SAA is in hand: Developer Associate (DVA) if you write code on AWS, SysOps if you operate it, or one of the Specialty paths (Security, Data Analytics, ML, Networking).
  5. Layer on Terraform for IaC, EKS or Fargate for containers, and one observability stack (CloudWatch + Datadog or Prometheus + Grafana). Then ship a real project using the AWS Well-Architected Framework as your checklist.

When to choose this path

Choose this roadmap if you want to specialize in AWS — the biggest cloud provider by market share and the one with the most jobs in 2026. It's the right path for cloud engineers narrowing focus, sysadmins moving to cloud, and developers wanting to ship to production on AWS. If you want broader cloud-engineer breadth across AWS, Azure, and GCP, choose the Cloud Engineer Roadmap. If your goal is to build apps that happen to run on AWS, the Backend Developer or Frontend Developer roadmaps are better starting points.

What you’ll learn

Recommended resources

Frequently asked questions

Should I learn AWS or general cloud engineering first?
If you want one cloud deeply, AWS first — biggest job market, broadest service catalog. If you want cloud-agnostic breadth, the Cloud Engineer Roadmap covers AWS plus Azure and GCP. Most senior cloud engineers go deep on one cloud and have working knowledge of the others.
Is AWS Cloud Practitioner (CCP) worth it?
It's optional. CCP is cheap, easy, and a useful checkpoint if you're brand new to cloud. Skip it if you're already comfortable with cloud concepts — go straight to Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) instead.
How hard is the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam?
Moderate. With 6-10 weeks of focused study and hands-on labs, most candidates pass. The exam tests breadth across ~30 services plus cost optimization and Well-Architected principles. Adrian Cantrill's course and Tutorials Dojo practice exams are the standard prep stack.
AWS SAA vs Solutions Architect Pro?
Start with SAA. Pro is significantly harder, costs more, and is only worth pursuing if you're consulting or working in a Pro-level architecture role. Many staff cloud engineers never bother with Pro.
Which AWS specialty cert is most valuable?
Depends on your direction — Security Specialty for security-focused roles, Data Analytics for data engineers on AWS, Machine Learning Specialty for AI/ML engineers, Networking for advanced cloud networking. Average market value is similar; pick the one closest to your target role.
How much does AWS cost while learning?
Under $20/month for a personal lab if you're careful. Use the Free Tier (12 months free for new accounts), shut down EC2 instances when not in use, and set up billing alerts. The bigger risk is forgetting a NAT gateway or RDS instance running for a week — bound your budget hard.
Is AWS still the biggest cloud in 2026?
Yes. AWS still leads in market share and breadth, with Azure as a strong number two (especially in enterprise) and GCP focused on data and AI workloads. Job postings still show roughly 2:1 AWS to Azure and 4:1 AWS to GCP in most US markets.

Related roadmaps

Last updated: 2026-04-27