What does a AWS solution architect do? | A step by step Guide
Last updated on 14th Jul 2020, Blog, General
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What a Day in the Life of an AWS Solutions Architect Looks Like
Many business enterprises are using AWS cloud computing solutions for web and application hosting, big data storage and analytics, backup and disaster recovery, custom projects in emerging areas like IoT and many more. They gain benefits like increased efficiency, cost-savings, greater speed, tighter security, and easier scalability through AWS cloud platform.
AWS with a larger market share of 47.8 percent is maintaining an edge over its competitors in the cloud industry (source: Gartner 2018). Since AWS is by far the biggest cloud computing service provider in the world today, there is a huge demand for AWS Solutions Architects. The salary of these professionals’ ranged anywhere between $120,000 – $ 180,000 in the year 2018-19.
AWS Architects must have an in-depth understanding of AWS architectural principles and services. They would plan, design, and scale AWS cloud implementations using the best practices recommended by Amazon. They should also help develop advanced cloud-based solutions and migrate existing workloads to the cloud. This mandates them to clear AWS Associate and Professional Level certifications.
AWS Cloud Solutions Architect job is rewarding in terms of pay packages and learning point of view but at the same time you need to have a good understanding of all technological pillars of IT-enabled businesses. Whether it’s programming, development, architecting, frameworks, networking, security, system admin, configuration management etc., you must have an idea, how it all works and how they are interconnected.
So, what does a day in these professionals’ life look like? Let’s explore.
a) Meetings With Different Stakeholders
As an AWS Solutions Architect, you have to gather the organization’s application requirements, provide solutions and architects. Therefore, part of your day will be spent consulting the sales teams and customers in-person or through conference calls to learn about their needs. Your tasks depend on what is their level of AWS adoption. It can be high-level talks, RCA, farther along with migration or implementation. Sometimes, AWS Solutions Architects are more focused on products rather than the customers.
You also have to interact with internal cross-functional teams to look into development, configuration, and management issues and provide solutions to them. Solution architects have to do multi-tasks like trade-offs, scheduling tasks, writing scripts, doing research on the latest AWS services, and many more.
b) Problem Solving
A major part of AWS Architect’s job will be designing solutions to meet customer needs and business goals, developing technical solutions, and pre-sales deliverables. That is “problem-solving.”
You’ll have to spend part of your day
- in formulating solution plans and provide guidance on AWS architectural best practices.
- estimate costs, identifying cost control mechanisms and working towards cost optimization.
- to select the appropriate AWS services – compute, storage, networking, database or security.
- designing and deployment of scalable, highly attainable, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS.
- working on the migration of an existing on-premises application to AWS.
- providing guidance on issues such as performance, cost, disaster recovery, and security concerns.
c) Great Learning Comes with Everyday Challenges
Solution Architect work revolves around the interface of various technologies.
- you should be well acquainted with how backend and frontend systems work.
- you need to keep an eye on the security and economics of cloud Infrastructure.
- you need to write scripts which generate reports analyzing sales data.
- you will also write the code for the existing cloud infrastructure.
- You need to troubleshoot and automate redundant tasks.
- review existing environments or new ones for cloud adoption.
- you could be present in meetings or even traveling to onsite for meeting customers.
d) Time & Team Management
With a lot of activities around you, you’ll need excellent time management skills. You need to plan your day, manage your time on tasks, delegation, team management, and prioritize your time on projects.
Lead the Pack!
AWS is constantly evolving and rapidly growing. This requires you to stay current with latest trends in AWS. You will be involved in learning and researching new services and features launched by AWS, as well as be on top of best practices to improve existing AWS.
If you’re already working as an AWS Architect and not certified then you might need additional training to ensure you’re on top of current services and recent changes in AWS. Through the AWS training course, you will get an overview of the AWS major services – IAM, VPC, EC2, EBS, S3, Route 53, RDS, Glacier, Cloudfront, Auto Scaling, Elastic Cache, and advanced concepts. You’ll get hands-on with key concepts, architectural best practices, and Global Infrastructure of AWS.