
Bart Castle
Cloud Computing & Cloud Security
Spotlight
The AWS certifications IT directors most often standardize their teams on. Each comes with hands-on virtual labs, N2K practice exams, and team admin reporting included.
Demonstrate your understanding of the AWS Cloud and its services, including architecture, pricing, security, and more. This certification is ideal for individuals who want to gain a broad understanding of the AWS Cloud and its applications. It's a great starting point for those new to AWS or looking to transition into a cloud-focused role.
Exam investment: $100 USD
Demonstrate your ability to design and deploy scalable, secure, and efficient cloud architectures on AWS. This certification validates your skills in designing and deploying cloud-based solutions, and is ideal for professionals with 2+ years of experience in designing and deploying cloud architectures.
Exam investment: 150 USD
The AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate certification validates your ability to deploy, manage, and operate scalable, highly available, and secure systems on AWS. This certification is ideal for IT professionals who have hands-on experience with AWS and are responsible for deploying and managing systems on the platform. It's recommended for those who have at least one year of experience with AWS and have a strong understanding of AWS services and their use cases.
Exam investment: 150 USD
Demonstrate your skills in developing cloud-based applications and solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This certification validates your ability to design, develop, and deploy cloud-based applications and solutions using AWS services. It is recommended for developers who have at least one year of hands-on experience with AWS.
Exam investment: $150 USD
The AWS Certified Security – Specialty certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing and implementing secure applications and systems on the AWS platform. This certification is ideal for security professionals, architects, and engineers who want to demonstrate their expertise in AWS security features and best practices.
Exam investment: 300 USD
The AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing and deploying scalable, secure, and highly available network architectures on AWS. This certification is ideal for network engineers, architects, and professionals who design and deploy network infrastructure on AWS. It demonstrates your expertise in designing and deploying AWS services such as VPCs, subnets, route tables, network ACLs, security groups, and Direct Connect.
Exam investment: 300 USD
The AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing, building, and managing scalable and secure data processing systems on AWS. This certification is ideal for data engineers, data architects, and data scientists who want to demonstrate their expertise in designing and implementing data processing systems on AWS. It is also suitable for professionals who want to migrate their data processing workloads to AWS.
Exam investment: $150 USD
AWS Certified AI Practitioner validates in-demand knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and generative AI concepts and use cases. Sharpen your competitive edge and position yourself for career growth and higher earnings.
Exam investment: $100
The AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (MLA-C01) certification validates the ability to design, implement, deploy, and maintain machine learning solutions on AWS. It is intended for individuals who perform a development or data science role and have one to two years of experience using machine learning and deep learning on the AWS Cloud.
Exam investment: $150
Mid-market IT leaders measure AWS training value in operational terms — faster onboarding into cloud admin roles, defensible IAM and security configurations for audit reviews, and a shared AWS vocabulary across cloud, security, and dev teams. Those are the outcomes leadership cares about, not seat-time or completion percentages.
Role-based paths
Match AWS certs to the actual roles your team holds. Each path bundles the right certs plus the operational depth engineers need day-to-day.
The associate-level credentials for teams operating production AWS. SAA-C03 is the architect baseline every senior cloud engineer should hold; SOA-C03 covers CloudOps for the team running the workloads. CLF-C02 establishes the shared cloud vocabulary across the org.
Demonstrate your understanding of the AWS Cloud and its services, including architecture, pricing, security, and more. This certification is ideal for individuals who want to gain a broad understanding of the AWS Cloud and its applications. It's a great starting point for those new to AWS or looking to transition into a cloud-focused role.
Exam investment: $100 USD
Demonstrate your ability to design and deploy scalable, secure, and efficient cloud architectures on AWS. This certification validates your skills in designing and deploying cloud-based solutions, and is ideal for professionals with 2+ years of experience in designing and deploying cloud architectures.
Exam investment: 150 USD
The AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate certification validates your ability to deploy, manage, and operate scalable, highly available, and secure systems on AWS. This certification is ideal for IT professionals who have hands-on experience with AWS and are responsible for deploying and managing systems on the platform. It's recommended for those who have at least one year of experience with AWS and have a strong understanding of AWS services and their use cases.
Exam investment: 150 USD
The developer-associate track for teams shipping serverless and containerized applications on AWS. DVA-C02 covers SAM, CDK, Lambda, DynamoDB, and the patterns AWS-shop dev teams use day-to-day.
Demonstrate your skills in developing cloud-based applications and solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This certification validates your ability to design, develop, and deploy cloud-based applications and solutions using AWS services. It is recommended for developers who have at least one year of hands-on experience with AWS.
Exam investment: $150 USD
Defend the AWS stack with SCS-C03 (Security – Specialty). Covers GuardDuty, Security Hub, IAM hardening, encryption at rest/in transit, and incident response patterns auditors want to see documented.
The AWS Certified Security – Specialty certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing and implementing secure applications and systems on the AWS platform. This certification is ideal for security professionals, architects, and engineers who want to demonstrate their expertise in AWS security features and best practices.
Exam investment: 300 USD
ANS-C01 (Advanced Networking – Specialty) for teams running Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, hybrid VPN, and multi-account network topologies. Pairs with the SAA-C03 architect track for full network-architecture coverage.
The AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing and deploying scalable, secure, and highly available network architectures on AWS. This certification is ideal for network engineers, architects, and professionals who design and deploy network infrastructure on AWS. It demonstrates your expertise in designing and deploying AWS services such as VPCs, subnets, route tables, network ACLs, security groups, and Direct Connect.
Exam investment: 300 USD
DEA-C01 covers the data engineering track (Glue, Redshift, EMR, MSK). AIF-C01 and MLA-C01 cover the AI/ML specialties for teams shipping generative AI and predictive ML workloads on AWS.
The AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate certification validates your skills and knowledge in designing, building, and managing scalable and secure data processing systems on AWS. This certification is ideal for data engineers, data architects, and data scientists who want to demonstrate their expertise in designing and implementing data processing systems on AWS. It is also suitable for professionals who want to migrate their data processing workloads to AWS.
Exam investment: $150 USD
AWS Certified AI Practitioner validates in-demand knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and generative AI concepts and use cases. Sharpen your competitive edge and position yourself for career growth and higher earnings.
Exam investment: $100
The AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (MLA-C01) certification validates the ability to design, implement, deploy, and maintain machine learning solutions on AWS. It is intended for individuals who perform a development or data science role and have one to two years of experience using machine learning and deep learning on the AWS Cloud.
Exam investment: $150

Hands-on AWS practice
Human-led training is the point: engineers practice real skills with expert guidance, not just video playback.
Why CBT Nuggets
The platform features IT directors evaluating us against Pluralsight, Udemy Business, and LinkedIn Learning ask about most often.
Practitioner-led
Built and taught by engineers who have spent decades running production AWS infrastructure — not crowd-sourced contributors.

Cloud Computing & Cloud Security

Cloud Computing & Cloud Security

Cloud Computing & DevOps
Team outcome
Role-aligned AWS paths help managers assign the right training without building a certification plan from scratch.
Best fit for: teams standardizing cloud fundamentals, hands-on labs, and certification coverage across a growing engineering group.
Common questions IT directors ask when evaluating AWS training for their team.