I’ve spent most of my career in software development leadership — as a manager, director, and senior leader who loves staying close to the code. Whether volunteering for on-call rotations or diving into complex systems like our ETL pipeline built with Spotify’s Luigi framework (Python), I’ve always enjoyed hands-on tech work.
My main responsibility was a monolithic Java application deployed fully on AWS. It was a stable, fun app, and I got to work with many AWS services. But over time, things stagnated.
As that app is now being rewritten, it got me thinking — how can I level up? I want to get current on microservices, machine learning, new languages, and modern cloud-native tools.
Over the last few months, I’ve dabbled with Erlang, explored REST integrations with Postman and Zoho CRM, but I feel I need more structured growth.
For years, I’ve wanted to earn the AWS Solutions Architect certification — not just for the credential, but to validate and expand what I know.
Looking at the current AWS certification paths, I decided to focus primarily on the AWS Machine Learning Engineer track. Since there’s overlap with the Solutions Architect cert, I’m considering completing those two extra certs later.
A trusted friend suggested a learning priority for me, which I really liked:
- AWS Solutions Architect (covering core AWS services and Lambda)
- Building Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications using AWS ML services
- Learning Go or Docker/Kubernetes based on what excites me most
Inspired, I teamed up with my virtual pal (ChatGPT) to build a step-by-step plan:
- AWS Machine Learning Engineer certification path
- AWS Solutions Architect certification (optional)
- Practical ML Engineering with RAG — vector databases, embeddings, pipelines, and a hands-on project
- Golang (or after the capstone, if time is tight)
- Docker and Kubernetes (CKAD certification included)
- Capstone project deploying a production-grade RAG chatbot
My goal is skill development — certifications are secondary. I’ll decide how much time to spend on exams versus hands-on learning as I go.
I’ve got my plan, my checklist, and I’m ready to start. I’ll be documenting the journey here — sharing what I learn and build.
Stay tuned!