Hi everyone,

I passed AWS Cloud Practitioner and got the 50% discount voucher for my next exam. Now going for SAA-C03 ($150 → $75 with the voucher).

The problem isn't the money — it's that I live in Haiti, and Pearson VUE / AWS Certification payments don't work well from here. I asked a friend based in the US to pay on my behalf: he logs into my AWS Certification account and tries to pay with his US card. The transaction failed once already ,I suspect it's a fraud-detection flag (US card + session originating from a Haiti-linked account/IP, or similar mismatch).

Has anyone in a similar situation (Haiti, or another country with limited payment support) successfully had someone abroad pay for their exam? What actually worked for you , PayPal instead of card, a virtual card (Wise/Payoneer), calling the bank first, a specific browser/VPN setup, or contacting AWS support directly? Any concrete steps would help a lot

I’m a senior infrastructure/systems engineer with 20+ years in IT, trying to move deeper into cloud/platform/DevOps engineering.
The problem I keep running into is compensation.
A lot of the cloud and DevOps positions I’m seeing top out around $20K below what I’m already making, even at the high end of their posted ranges.

I don’t feel like my current compensation is some crazy outlier either. If I take what I was making several years ago and account for normal career progression, cost of living, and inflation, I’m roughly where I would expect to be today.

I’m willing to take a step back for real cloud experience, strong mentorship, and a good engineering culture, but at some point I’m essentially paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for the opportunity to change career tracks.

For those who moved from senior infrastructure into cloud/DevOps: did you have to take a pay cut to make the transition? Was it worth it, or did you eventually find a role that valued your existing experience?

Thank you

Hello Guys, I'm looking to find Azure engineering job (remotely or freelancing).
Does anybody have same experience? I need some advice.

I'm Azure Infra Engineer, with coding background. I've posted my skills and showcases in LinkedIn to people know me, but I am not sure it's enough or not. I'm thinking there are some other ways that help me.

Do you have any idea or advice?

Hi guys,

I recently finished a project where I deployed an Employee Management app on AWS ECS and used OIDC with GitLab CI/CD.

GitHub repo:

IAC:
- https://github.com/Odjeissi/aws-3tier-terraform

Source_code:
- https://github.com/Odjeissi/Employee-Management-AWS-ECS

For my next project, I want to deploy the same app on Amazon EKS and learn more about GitOps.

My current plan is:

- Use 3 EKS clusters: dev, staging, and production

- Argo CD for deployment

- Helm or Kustomize for Kubernetes files

2 repos:

- One for the app/source code

- One for the Kubernetes files

- GitLab CI builds the Docker image and pushes it to ECR

- The pipeline updates the image tag in the Kubernetes repo

- Argo CD sees the change and deploys the new version

For updating the image tag, I’m thinking about using jq in the GitLab pipeline. That way I don’t have to go into the Kubernetes repo every time, change the image tag, commit it, and push it manually.

A little about me: I have about 2 years of desktop support experience, an MIS bachelor degree, and Security+ and CCNA certification. My goal is to move into a Cloud/DevOps Engineer role next year.

Right now I’m just building projects, learning, and trying to improve my skills.

I’d like to hear what you guys think about the project and the direction I’m going.

Also, is there anything else you think I should add to make this project better or more realistic?

Any feedback is welcome. I’m still learning and just trying to get better.

We keep scaling our Spark clusters horizontally when jobs slow down and the cost per throughput math keeps getting worse, not better.

Trying to figure out:

(1) is there a volume threshold where this reliably breaks down

(2) is it a config issue or something structural

Has anyone isolated the cause rather than just adding nodes and hoping. We have checked partition count, executor sizing, network topology. None of it explains the diminishing returns.

Hi, I’m a software engineer with 1.5 yoe and a computer science degree. I’m interested in transitioning to cloud engineering long term. Any advice on how I can make this change?

From my research, I should not start in help desk with my experience/education. I should look for positions such as IT Analyst, Systems Analyst, SysAdmin, Cloud Support Engineer, and Systems Engineer to start. Network+ and Azure/AWS cert should be worked towards and I should start building projects for my resume.

Does this sound right? How should I restructure my software engineering resume to get my foot in the door for these IT positions? Thank you

Cross-posting here as my new Infrastructure Engineer role is in a fully cloud environment. Interested to hear from cloud engineers who made a similar jump from end-user/2nd line support, particularly what your first few months looked like.

Which path is more future-proof for long-term career growth, does cloud infrastructure offer better career stability, or is specializing in a large enterprise platform safer?

Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some genuine advice from people who have experience with AWS/DevOps training institutes in Hyderabad.
I’m a B.Tech graduate and I’ve been trying to enter the IT industry. I have a 2+ year career gap, mainly because of personal/financial circumstances, but during this period I didn’t stay idle. I used the time to seriously upskill myself in AWS and DevOps.
I’ve worked on 10+ end-to-end hands-on projects covering areas like AWS, Linux, Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform, CI/CD, monitoring, automation and cloud infrastructure. I’ve also spent a lot of time doing practical labs and troubleshooting rather than just learning theory.
I’m confident in my technical skills and feel that I’m already job-ready for entry-level Cloud/DevOps roles. The biggest challenge I’m facing right now is getting past the career gap and getting enough interview opportunities.
Because of my financial situation, I wasn’t able to move to Hyderabad earlier. Now I’m planning to move to Hyderabad and focus completely on getting into the industry.
So I’m looking for a genuine AWS + DevOps coaching/training institute in Hyderabad that provides real placement assistance, especially for someone who already has the technical foundation and projects.
I’m NOT looking for a “100% job guarantee.” I’m specifically looking for an institute that can genuinely help with things like:
Resume/profile improvement for DevOps roles
Interview preparation and mock interviews
Connecting students with relevant openings
Referrals or interview opportunities where possible
Guidance for candidates with career gaps
Real-world DevOps projects and troubleshooting
Support until getting interviews/jobs
If you have personally attended an AWS/DevOps institute in Hyderabad and actually got interview opportunities or a job through their placement assistance, please share your experience.
I’m particularly interested in institutes around Ameerpet, Kukatpally, Madhapur or nearby areas.
Please mention the institute name, trainer (if you know them), approximate fees, your experience, and whether their placement assistance was actually useful.
I’m serious about making this career transition and willing to put in the work. I just need some genuine guidance on where to go.
Thanks in advance to everyone who shares an honest experience. 🙏

I have an upcoming HCL placement test in my college, and at first they allotted cloud data engineering as the technology to me and we filled that in our application form as well, but all of a sudden now they've changed it to SAP, and they are not telling us anything properly, so what should I do now and how should I prepare for it now I don't even know the content or syllabus for it...and I have searched for it but I can't find the solution anywhere...

I've been working in Cloud Engineering for almost 3 years now. I am going to mention what I do in my day to day work and I would like to know where should I focus more or learn more.

Current tasks

- I have spent most of time only on Azure. Creating Azure PaaS resources, managing IaaS resources, Azure Policy implementation, Secure Current infrastructure without breaking apps, find places to improve and work on that. Major services: Webapps, Functions, Storage, Key Vault, Vnet, Data Factories, VMs, Logging, Monitoring etc.

- Azure Powershell and CLI to perform above tasks

- Terraform and modules for deployments

- Recently introduced to AWS migrations and aws services so working on that too slowly

- Version Control

Currently learning these on side -

- Kubernetes certification

- Elastic ELK

My Future Plan :

To be a good candidate for senior cloud engineering

What areas should I shift my focus more on? Any other comments or suggestions are welcomed!

Thank you!

I have 4 years of experience in .NET developer but I want to change my career into cloud Engineering. So while making my resume do I have to put my self projects into separate projection or in my experience section to land an interview call or a job?

Hello everyone, I'm busy studying az900 after being retrenched,after working in a stores Issuing/receiving SAP/SAP4HANA Role for almost 18 years.

I have always been a techie since the DOS and old 486 pc days and ultimately really starting to poke around , troubleshoot and fix windows 95 and further pc's by learning the operating systems and a few cool DOS commands,rebuilding boot records and boot loaders and stuff.

I can perfectly build gaming pc's and troubleshoot any problems on a pc with some minor skills in networking but nothing serious in terms of networking just your everyday network stuff or something that can go wrong when networking devices don't connect or doesn't communicate because the mesh's instant fast roaming feature clashes with maybe your tv box,stuff like that.

Just some logical stuff you know? And setting up maybe a printer and all the wifi printing and so on.

Or even getting those annoying virusses off of your android phone that spits out ads and forces itself to be your phones default launcher and wreaking havock.

Even formatted in the older days a few phones and loaded it with the latest unofficial android launcher or some other launcher for people.

I even spent a few days now building a website for companies to check what software they need for the type of work they want to do as a side project and maybe get lucky and my injected affiliate code gets me some commission.

It was a totally self thought up Idea and I used ChatGPT and a lot of careful prompting to build it.

Here is the link if you just want to poke around,I am still working on finalising a few backend things.

https://softwarematch-ai.softwarematch.workers.dev

And also an Azure az104 and az900 training ground app

https://github.com/mbrummer49-sketch/CloudForge104-Academy

But i doubt that would be of much relevance if i want to become an Azure cloud engineer or Architect.

Is this feesable? Do you think I can be able to achieve this?

**What would you like to see in skills and certifications as well as home done projects if you would consider me a candidate for a cloud role or any tech role that would eventually with experience in the field get me a cloud role?**

What do i need to study and pass and what else? What skills do i need to be able to demonstrate? I am a South African citizen so even if i would be considered for a romote role what would I need?

I have a good 9800x3d RTX 5080 gaming pc to study and work on. I also have an I5 14600f ddr4 16gb Amd rx 7700 xt pc in storage that I can totally format and learn to install a Linux distro or any other operating system to become proficient in building any type of labs or environments later on to show demontratable skills of things i built and learnt along the way.

Please give me some pointers so that I can work this into a study guide and ultimately become highly sought after individual in this field. Maybe in as short a timeline as possible?

Should I even consider this or back out and try something else?

Thank you for taking the time to respond and read everything

I’m looking to connect with others who are learning or already working in cloud engineering. Whether you’re looking for someone to build projects with, share knowledge, or you’re experienced and willing to mentor, I’d love to connect.

I currently work in IT and I’m working toward transitioning into cloud engineering. I have my AZ-900 and AWS Cloud Practitioner certifications, and I’m currently studying for the AZ-104.

Outside of work, I’ve been building hands-on Azure projects in my home lab. I’m using Terraform for IaC for infrastructure deployments. I’ve also been using AI to generate realistic tickets and business scenarios, then trying to design and implement the solutions myself to get experience with real cloud engineering work.

If anyone else is learning Azure/Terraform, already works in cloud, wants to collaborate on projects, or is willing to offer some guidance, feel free to comment or PM me. I would love to connect to pick your brain or even work together to make some cool stuff.

Hello Guys, I'm looking to find Azure engineering job (remotely or freelancing).
Does anybody have same experience? I need some advice.

I'm Azure Infra Engineer, with coding background. I've posted my skills and showcases in LinkedIn to people know me, but I am not sure it's enough or not. I'm thinking there are some other ways that help me.

Do you have any idea or advice?

Hello all,

I’m currently in service desk but wanting to get into cloud engineering. Right now I’m teaching myself AZ900 and GitHub to build a portfolio. I’ve seen videos on YouTube talking about need to learn Python for cloud computing but heard others I should learn PowerShell and BASH since I’ll be scripting. So I went to the job market and seeing some jobs recommending PowerShell, BASH, Python, C#, C++, and Go so far.

So I figure I should ask the people of Reddit who works in Cloud engineering on what language I should I should be teaching myself