00:00Hey everyone, I'm Lucy. And I'm Dane. And we're Solutions Architects working at Amazon Web Services.
00:05Today we're going to be talking about the skills required to become an effective Solutions Architect
00:10and how you can gain those skills to land a job at AWS.
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01:03Now, let's get back to the video.
01:05So, Dane, first of all, what is a Solutions Architect?
01:08Well, that's a big question.
01:09I think we could probably spend most of the video just talking through,
01:12I guess, what the role is and what the role is about.
01:15But for me, I think a Solutions Architect is about helping a customer at its core.
01:21So, helping a customer from a technical lens, right?
01:24So, it could be looking up documentation to help them sort of get over a difficult problem.
01:29It could be helping out with some of their solution design,
01:31proposing or maybe even inspiring some solution design on their part, right?
01:35It could even be building out a small proof of concept
01:37if there's something that they wanted to prove out,
01:40if they wanted to understand a bit more about.
01:42So, yeah, I think it's just a lot about just helping a customer
01:44and having that extra technical lens around it just at a general level.
01:48So, Lucy, what do you think are some of the technical skills required for a Solution Architect?
01:51Yep. So, it all comes down to the Solutions Architect role that you apply for.
01:57You know, if you apply for a more specialised role,
01:59then they'll have more specialised technical requirements.
02:01But let's just say you're applying to an Associate Solutions Architect role
02:05as a general Solutions Architect.
02:07The technical skills that they look for can be broken up into five main domains.
02:11So, there's networking, compute, databases, storage and security.
02:16And they look for technical breadth across all five of these domains.
02:20And if you can show technical depth in at least one of them,
02:23that would really help you stand out as a candidate.
02:26And cloud knowledge is quite useful as well.
02:28It's not a strong prerequisite, but if you have some knowledge of AWS services,
02:33that can really help you in the interview as well.
02:36So, in this case, you know, we'll talk about this later,
02:39but getting AWS certifications will be quite helpful.
02:41Getting hands-on with doing cloud projects,
02:43it just shows your knowledge and interest for cloud experience.
02:48So, Dan, we've talked a lot about technical skills now.
02:51What do you think are some of the non-technical skills needed to become an SA?
02:55Yeah, so as a solution I could take,
02:56you will spend a lot of time in front of the customer, right?
02:59So, I think being personable is something that's quite important.
03:03Being able to have some of those technical conversations at a high level,
03:08which I know sometimes is a bit tricky coming from like an engineering or a technical background.
03:12So, having the ability to sort of translate to some extent what some of those ideas might be
03:17and be able to present them to a more general audience.
03:20And it does depend as well, right?
03:21I think there's an element of being able to understand your audience
03:23and be able to kind of present based on who's in the room.
03:26So, often a customer might ask a question in a certain way
03:32and there is maybe a part to just looking on corners of what they actually might mean, right?
03:36What the core of the problem is that they're trying to solve.
03:40So, I think having that ability to proactive to upfront investigate
03:43and understand what the core of the problem might be,
03:46I think that's something that's very helpful.
03:48It might be easiest to just spout a lot of technical jargon or technical concepts,
03:53which is not always as helpful for a customer.
03:55So, being able to sort of step that back and, again, translate it to some extent,
03:59I think is definitely a valuable skill to have, right?
04:02And also the willingness to have those conversations.
04:04So, Lucy, if someone was interested in gaining some of the skills
04:07that we've been talking about, where is a good place to start?
04:10Yeah, let's break that down again into technical and non-technical skills.
04:14So, for the technical skills, as I mentioned, certifications is a big one.
04:18It's a great way to start your current learning journey.
04:20And even though the skills that you gain from the certifications
04:23and the knowledge is mostly theoretical because, you know,
04:26they're multiple-choice exams,
04:27it's quite helpful in just getting that foundation of what is the cloud,
04:31what are some services AWS offers.
04:33And then from there, you can start a cloud project,
04:36for example, a 3T web application.
04:38Just getting some hands-on experience will be really helpful.
04:40You know, combining the services that you learnt from the certifications
04:44into something that you can present in an interview or showcase on your resume.
04:48One more way to gain technical skills to become an effective solutions architect
04:51is having a look at AWS white papers and reference architectures.
04:55These usually have been created by solutions architects
04:58or members of the technical team here at AWS.
05:01And they're a great way for you to learn about AWS best practices
05:04when it comes to architecting.
05:06So, Dane, what about the non-technical skills?
05:08Is there any recommendations on how to build them?
05:10Yeah, so I think looking for opportunities to be able to, you know,
05:15get in front of an audience or get in front of you,
05:17even if it's a one-on-one scenario,
05:18being able to present something and looking out for those opportunities
05:22even within your team, I think is definitely valuable for practice.
05:26I think an awesome one that's been helpful for me is looking out for a mentor, right?
05:30So looking out for someone who kind of ticks the boxes
05:33in terms of things that you might strive to achieve.
05:36And it might not be completely end-to-end,
05:37but maybe there's specific skills that you kind of admire in them
05:40that you'd like to build in yourself, right?
05:42Maybe it is in the presenting space.
05:44So yeah, kind of look out for a mentor,
05:47connect with them and spend some time with them.
05:49There is also an element of just knowing where you can personally improve, right?
05:53So looking out for some of the spots that you think
05:57maybe you can do a little bit better
05:58because that way you can maybe consciously focus some of that effort
06:01on improving those parts as well.
06:02So I think that's something that's at least helped me
06:04in terms of the self-skill side, right?
06:06So not just on the technical side.
06:08Yeah, that's a really good point.
06:09You know, sort of evaluating your strengths and weaknesses
06:11and trying to figure out what you need to improve on.
06:14All right, so this brings us to the end of this video
06:16on what are the skills required to become
06:18an effective solutions architect at AWS.
06:20Please give this video a like if you found it helpful
06:23and leave your questions down in the comments below.
06:25Thank you so much, Dane, for coming on to the show today.
06:28Yeah, no worries.
06:28And thank you for watching this video all the way to the end.
06:31If you enjoyed learning about the skills required
06:33to become a solutions architect,
06:35I recommend checking out this video I made
06:37where I go through common solutions architect interview questions.
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