See okay. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our session for from zero to cloud hero or heroine, if I can say so.How AWS solutions architect certification transforms career across industry. My name is Neelam Koshia. I'm a principal applied AI architect at Amazon Web Services, and I've been with Amazon seven and a half years. One of the first certification that I gave was actually this specific certification, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about this journey. I'll hand it over to Jing who is my co speaker today. Jing?

Hi, everybody. My name is Jing, Jing Ning. I have been with AWS for four years now. I lead a team of AI acceleration partner solution architects. And like Milam, I wanted to share with you how my journey of pivoting to AWS to tech to a solution architect looks like by leveraging some of the contents we're gonna talk about today. Cool. So we are so thrilled to be here at the Women Tech Global Conference. And, today, we

are going to talk about something that genuinely changed my perspective on career transformation in tech, the AWS solutions architect certification. Whether you are a career switcher or developer looking to level up or someone who's never touched a cloud console, this talk is for you. So let's start off with why this matters and why right now. So cloud isn't the future. It's actually the present, and AWS alone powers a third of the global cloud market. And here's the exciting part, There simply aren't enough qualified people to fill this role. That gap that gap is actually your opportunity. So as you can see some of the stats here, $1,500,000,000,000 is the market is the cloud market for 2028, and 150 k plus open cloud jobs are available right now globally.

Now let's talk about the elephant in the room. So only 19% of the cloud professional are actually women. Now that's not because we can't do it. We earn up to 45 40% of the computer science degree. The pipeline exists, but somewhere between education and the workforce, we are losing talent. And certification like the AWS solutions architect can be a powerful equalizer. They validate your skills regardless of your background, your network, or when you went to school. Now, let's talk about what actually is this certification. Think about it as your passport to cloud architecture. The associate level is kind of your entry point. It proves that you can design reliable, cost efficient, scalable systems on AWS. And here's what I love. There is no prerequisite, no degree requirement, no years of experience, Just you, your preparation, and the exam.

Now let's talk about the money because representation without compensation isn't real progress. So a solutions architect associate holders are pulling around 150 k to 165 k US dollars as median salary. If you go professional, you are looking at around a $175,000 to $210,000. That's 18% premium over uncertified preers, and a signing bonus is around 15 k to 50 k. And the exam cost you mere $150. That return of investment is humongous. Now here's what makes this certification so powerful. It's not just for tech companies. Every industry needs cloud architect. Health care needs you for HIPAA compliant system. Finance needs you for a real time trading platforms. Government contractors are offering 200 25 k to 50 signing bonus for such professionals. So you're not necessarily locked into one path.

You're looking to unlock all of them across industry and then grow yourself into a a more long term career journey and career progression. I'll hand it over to Jing now.

Thanks, Nilam. Just what like, what Nilam shared with that industry. Right? So we still do this now as solution architect. Like, for example, the retail. Right? There's you would go to a website and you're looking at how to buy clothes. Usually, you choose online, but technology or being the architect, you can design, a virtual tryout so that people can visualize what that looks like. And that's the power of being a cloud solution architect and design for patterns for real world application. To do that, I wanna share a little bit of the transformation stories. Some patterns I've seen. Right? Like, like, for example, a former teacher. Our team has examples like this. They study the cloud solution architect for for over a year past exam. They were able to leverage that and double their salary.

Our project manager who has the organization skills, and they were able to move into a vertical health care cloud architecture role. Things like this are the traditional developer. Right? So junior developer, they'll use the certification as a springboard to jump to a senior role in just barely two years short. And these are not unicorns, and these are repeatable patterns. I also wanna share a little bit of personal story. Myself, I work in a different industry, oil and gas, for for eight years before I make the move to be a AWS solution architect. And what helped me are those studying the the entry point of understanding what it takes to build on a cloud provider, on AWS, and be a solution architect, how to design patterns, putting the block Lego blocks together, to solve a problem. Right? So that is my personal pivoting story, and then I wanna encourage you to think about it.

And if you're in the process of doing that, to really go through it. Going to the next slide, I'm gonna share a little bit of how do you actually can do this. Take the timeline with a little bit of green or salt. Everybody's different in terms of where you are, but I do wanna lay a little bit of the different steps you should be thinking about. So if we're looking at month one or two, if you're at cloud zero right now, what you really should be doing is get your hands dirty, start building, right, with a free tier, a best free tier. You can just sign up and do it today or tonight. And this is where you're looking in the cloud practitioner exam or certification. Moving on to month three and four, you're actually deep studying. You're building. You're doing the deep dive. You're getting understanding, some of the real world examples and practices are.

And then leading up to that, you should be thinking, how do I join a community? Do practice exams, finding your mentoring, study buddies together so that you can really talk about the different ways of thinking about the same problem. And then month six or the last step is where you are taking the actual exam, and you're still looking in the different roles to pivot or to actually make a step into a cloud, solution architectural. And the best part of all of that is AWS Skill Builder has free resources. If you do not know, start today. You can start today with zero financial investment. Literally, look up AWS Skill Builder and can start with the free tier and get hands on, today. So next one next slide, I do wanna talk about, well, you do this. You don't have to do this alone, and, honestly, you shouldn't. I didn't do it alone.

I joined community, and I wanted to highlight the power of communities here, like women tech, women in cloud, and AWS she builds. That's also a program that Milam is deeply involved with, and these are excellent resources and community to support your journey. Right? So you don't have to do this alone. Find somebody with a similar path. Think about pivoting. Join a user group. Find a mentor. And the women in this room right now, they are your network and exchange contacts and, find us on LinkedIn. This is how we can work together to close the 19% gap. Doing it together rather than doing it alone. So if you're ready to transform your careers, I wanna talk about two different ways and then give you some resources to help you get there.

So next slide, this is actually what, Milam and myself, we coauthored a AWS solution architect associate certification guide. You can you can scan the QR code and buy it now. You can look into that. I wanna highlight two things, what makes this unique. Right? We talk about how this is important. This should help you pivot as a first step. There are a lot of updated resources and real world examples from our combined working experience with real customers, real world problem. That is what's key instead of just book knowledge or, I guess, count dry concepts. So I would really encourage you to give it a rate and really think about after you learn the basic concept, how to put it together.

What are the practical things to think think about and watch out for while you think about designing a role or solution? Because that's what you need on the job. So lastly, I would say your, Cloud Hero journey starts now. This is a this is a action call for action I wanted to we want to leave with, leave you with. You don't need anybody's permission to become a cloud architect. You don't need to the exam doesn't ask you where do you go to school, how many years experience you have in tech. It doesn't matter. You can start today. Ask what really ask is, can you design resilient, scalable systems? And the answer is yes. You can. You absolutely can.

So you should, starting today, get your free AWS account and check out the skill builder and work backwards. Pick exam day a couple of months from now, put in your calendar right now, and start joining one community this week. And then couple of months from now, you could be the cloud hero in your story. And that's what really we wanted to encourage you guys to do, find the community and start start a path forward, making the first step today now. So lastly, this is the LinkedIn contact Neelam and myself have. Really wanna encourage you to reach out and and contact us, and we can chat on LinkedIn, making the connections.

You just need to start make that first step, like both of us. We did it. You can do it too. So don't wait. Start now. Start today. Thank you.

Okay. Let me stop sharing. Am I how do I one second. Okay. Yeah. So for the folks on the call, do you have any questions for us? Please feel free to add it in the chat. Let us know if you if you have any questions for us. Okay. 19%. I know, Annie, that is really, really an statistics astounding statistic. For my case also, I know Jin shared her story. My case also for me, I have a software engineering background, didn't work much in cloud. But I think the certification really helped to give me confidence, give me the credentials to actually apply at AWS. So for me, also, that was the first certification that I completed. Alexis mentioned that she is already a AWS cloud practitioner. That's fantastic.

And she sat on the SA associate certification twice. Great job. Very close to pass. I feel seven seven zero eight. I I'm hoping with all the best for your, you know, future attempt. I'm sure you're very close. This close to getting, you know, that cleared. Okay. Jennifer has asked, I took the AWS CloudQuest for my research for practitioner. Are they most sort of available in this route? I would suggest cloud practitioner is the starter, like, the first exam of familiarizing. These are the different services. So solution architect associates goes a little bit more deeper wherein you use your knowledge that you have about these different services to help design real, systems solving business problems. So I would suggest you to try out with the AWS solutions, architect associate. Jennifer, is coding experience needed? Not really.

It's good to have, but I don't think it's a must have when you're designing. I'll let Jing add add, as well there.

Yeah. I didn't code much with my previous job. I wouldn't necessarily say say coding experience is needed, but I would say this is what's probably hot this day in everybody's mind, leveraging AI to do that, to complement what your mind, how you wanna think through the problem is very much needed for every single job. Like, Nina and myself were still in in the AWS SA domain right now these days, leveraging AI, using AI. That's the everyday task thing. It's not even, oh, I'm intentionally gonna do that. Every single task we do, technical, nontechnical, we're leveraging AI. I would also say that think about the the reality is, right, we're talking about a AWS SA associate. As you do that, you join a company. I know in my team, we also have a goal after you join. Getting getting the AWS SA associate is required.

And that the step after that is a SA professional, associate going to professional. That's required to met after one month on the job. So there's a lot things here. Getting the search is definitely a critical step. Encourage everybody pivoting to go on that, but keep thinking about how do you leverage AI to accelerate that for yourself. Pick up one model and start using it and even leverage AI for your for your, exam prep to kinda help you cross check your thoughts and thinking about how help you think through the process a little bit more.

Thanks, Jing. So I I I, saw Jennifer's message about the game based learning search. So we do have in skill build builder, a solution architect specific one. So, you know, feel free to sign up for that. Many of the skill builder courses are absolutely free, very immersive as well. So, you know, you can get a feel of that. What does a day as a SAA looks like? Jing, do you wanna go first and then I can I can

I do? I wanna share a lot of this. What do what does it look like? I think there are two components. One component is actually talking with the customer or partner. I guess when I say customer partner, it's somebody who has an actual use case. I'm gonna go back to that retail use case I'm talking about. There's retailer. They have their, the the website, but they have a lot of returns. Right? Like, people buy their stuff, but then it doesn't feed them. They're like, okay. What's the technology that can help us do that? Can you guys help us design a architect solution to solve the problem so that I get more buyers can get a high chance or not take keeping the stuff they bought from our website and not returning. We're like, okay. The technology can help. So meeting with customers, understanding what solution is being proposed to solve that problem, that's a big part of that.

That's external facing, customer facing. Another big channel that is go back in your AWS environment and start sketching out what it takes to do that. That's a build part. And then iterating back to say whether what I build meet the business goal. Does that help you? If not, keep iterating through that with the final delivery will will be a solution when live that literally showed up on that customer's website. You see that's what you design that feature. I think that's a big part of being an SA to interfering with the customer and to actually build. Again, I'll emphasize again, triple again, using AI for every part of this workflow to augment your knowledge and help you accelerate the build. Nilam, I'm sure you have a lot to share on this issue.

I know we just have, like, two minutes, so I'll go really quickly. It's a very short twenty minute session. But I feel for me, our bucket as a solutions architect, at least at AWS, is in three in three pillars. So first is customer adviser, and this would be doing hands on POC, providing design reviews, providing suggestions. How do they take this POC to production, and, how they can derive business values using cloud. I think that's one piece of it. The second is thought leadership. How do I, if I build something for one customer, how do I generalize it and share it with this bigger group? This would be blog posts, open sourcing the call, workshops, speaking at, conferences like re:Invent or other industry level conferences.

And then the third one is org initiative, which also includes how do we improve our platform, you know, getting all the feedback, how do we let our platform team know about it. Mentoring is another key piece of our initiative as well. And then how do we improve our own internal organization using AI? Because I'm a AI specialist, I kind of combine AI and cloud kind of together, but those are the three main pillars. Okay. I think if there are no more questions, me and Jane would oh, what helped you most when starting in cloud? Jane, do you want to take that?

For me, it's one word. Just start building. Start building and learning.

Yeah. Same here. I think learn and be curious. There is always a starting point for everybody, right, irrespective of where you are. Right? I feel like sign up for the skill builder, have a target for yourself, and go ahead from it. Thank you so much everybody for spending the twenty minutes with us. I hope you enjoyed it as much as me and Jing enjoyed it, putting all of this together for you. Thank you.