I'm a professional, sort of

It's already been seven months since I joined AWS as a Solutions Architect and, while ramping up in my daily works and duties, I managed to train and successfully pass my hardest certification.

Three years after passing the Associate one at Claranet, and a few days before its expiry, I managed to pass the Professional version of the Solutions Architect certification.

I was told this certification was the hardest one in all AWS certifications because it covers a lot of topics you may not encounter during a normal career. It's true. Even with almost 20 years in the industry and almost eight working with AWS solutions for companies of all sizes, there are whole parts of the certification I didn't heard of and had to dive deep, learn & try to fully understand what it was about (Im' looking at you, Direct Connect)

Being an amazonian studying for this certification does not mean we're privileged and have access to study resources free of charge or special exam: we take the one available over AWS Training like everyone¹. Nevertheless, there is an active internal community where we can get advices, help and we share the best resources we find.

In case you also want to take, and pass, this exam, here are the learning resources I bought:

1. The Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional 2023 by Stephane Maarek. The best course to get the correct level of details on all topics and get a good overview of what is expected during the exam.
2. Practices exams from Stephane Maarek on Udemy and the ones from Jon Bonso on Tutorial Dojo.

In my experience, all practice exams were harder than the real one so it was difficult to keep one after a failed one but they taught me the way to think about answers, keep the pillars in mind and, a major point, make a good use of the time alloted.

I now have a few month free of study before taking on the Security Specialty. Zelda, here I come!