5 out of 5

Today marks a massive career goal and personal achievement for me: I passed my final Amazon Web Services exam.

I was set a goal when I first joined Cloudreach as an Engineer in April 2014 to get my AWS Solutions Architect and SysOps Administrator exams (both Associate level) within six months. I managed to do it in six months and 4 days to be exact, passing the Solutions Architect in August and the SysOps in October. As I had passed the SysOps certification I was invited to take part in the DevOps Engineer Professional exam beta, which was tough as it had double the number of questions (over 100!) and you had to wait a few weeks for your result. Thankfully I passed this in February 2015, albeit not with a great pass mark but I was sitting it to get experience to re-sit the final exam - if you failed the beta you were given a free retest.

I then moved on to Azure, gaining my 70-534 then 70-533 by the end of 2015.

I hadn't sat an AWS exam in over a year when a reminder that my Associate level Solutions Architect exam was expiring in August dropped into my inbox. I thought it'd be a good challenge to get the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam before then. Through a combination of work resources (thanks Alberto!) and watching many Re:invent videos (and failing the practice exam to know where I needed to focus) I managed to pass the exam this month (May 2016) and to complete the set I sat the Developer Associate today.

Here's hoping when AWS release another tier (I think there's supposed to be an Expert tier coming soon) I'll be able to achieve those too!

I might even stick in and get the 70-532 for Azure as well to complete that set...

Thanks for reading!