A Tenth Revolution Group Company

7 AWS skills you need on your resume

By Jamie Mercer

Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere.  

In the Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition, nearly half (48%) of respondents reported an increase in demand for AWS partner services in the last 12 months. And this trend set to continue, with Gartner forecasting that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will grow another 20.7% by the end of 2023, totaling almost $600 billion. 

Organizations are no longer talking about potentially migrating to the cloud, they’re already there. And they need help from skilled AWS professionals to help make their cloud projects a success. But staying up to date in best cloud practice can be tough—especially with AWS’ rate of change, as more and more products are added to the AWS catalog every month. 

So when we surveyed AWS professionals in our Careers and Hiring Guide, we looked for any trends we could spot, and have identified these seven must-have AWS skills that you need to highlight on your resume in 2023 for more success when job hunting this year. 

1. Database

With half (50%) of respondents in our guide telling us that they’re experienced in database, this is one area to revisit, to keep up with your competition.  

Be sure to highlight any experience in common database technologies, from on-premises and cloud-based, to NoSQL databases, as well as any skills you hold related to database management tasks, such as server provisioning, patching, configuration, and backups.  

Be sure to revise this expertise often, however. As AWS Data Hero and Principal in Data Engineering, Rob Kosh, advises in our Careers and Hiring Guide: 

A picture of Rob Kosh

“While you may gain experience and know-how, and may feel you’ve mastered it all, wait—there’s always more to learn. The data engineering field is fascinating since every customer always seems to have their own set of challenges, and there are plenty of opportunities for optimisation.”

Rob Kosh, AWS Data Hero and Principal in Data Engineering

  

2. Storage

Our Careers and Hiring Guide found that 43% of candidates are experienced with storage, meaning it’s important you’ve included any storage skills on your resume.  

Millions of end-users rely on AWS storage services to transform their business, and with demand for these solutions only growing, so too is the demand for talent to implement them. In fact, our Careers and Hiring Guide found that storage ranks in the top ten AWS areas most in-demand with partners’ clients in the past year.  

In short, employers and hiring managers will be scanning resumes for storage skills in 2023, including disaster recovery and backup to object, file, and block storage knowledge.

3. Serverless 

With 4 in 10 (39%) candidates experienced in serverless and a quarter (25%) of AWS Partners reporting that the area is in high demand with their clients, this is a skill sure to catch the eye of hiring managers this year.  

Ensure your resume features any experience working with serverless technology, such as AWS Lambda, SQS, SNS, API Gateway.  

In a blog post, Justin Pirtle, specialist Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, identified skills that every Serverless Architect needs to know: 

    • API and Microservices Design (API Gateway) 
    • Event-driven architectures and asynchronous messaging patterns (Amazon Kinesis Data Streams) 
    • Workflow orchestration in a distributed, microservices environment (AWS Rekognition and AWS Step Functions) 
    • Lambda computing environment and programming model (AWS Lambda) 
    • Serverless deployment automation and CI/CD patterns (AWS Serverless Application Model, AWS Amplify, and AWS Chalice) 
    • Serverless identity management, authentication, and authorization (Amazon Cognito and AWS Identity and Access Management) 
    • End-to-end security techniques 
    • Application observability with comprehensive logging, metrics and tracing (AWS X-Ray) 
    • Making sure your application is well-architected 

4. Security, Identity, & Compliance

With more organizations moving more of their operations to the cloud, the need for thorough cloud security has never been greater.  

Security is a shared responsibility between the providers and the organizations that use them, which means companies are looking for cloud professionals with security specialization who can leverage the cloud security tools offered by AWS.  

What’s more, little over a third (35%) of AWS professionals in our Careers and Hiring Guide reported experience with security, identity, and compliance.  

When considering that those working for partners listed security issues as one of the main challenges their clients commonly face when migrating to AWS, and that AWS professionals told us security was one of the main areas they lacked training and development, it’s clear that having these skills on your resume will help you secure an interview for your next role.   


On the lookout for your next great AWS job?

Upload your resume and we’ll get to work finding the perfect match for your skills, experience, and ambitions. Find fantastic AWS roles without lifting a finger.

Let’s do this


5. Cloud Financial Management 

Just one-fifth (20%) of AWS professionals we surveyed reported having experience in cloud financial management, meaning this area is filled with opportunity for those with the right skillset.  

With a likely impending recession and one-fifth of respondents in our Careers and Hiring Guide citing budget shortages as reasoning for their AWS implementation delay, cloud financial management skills are sure to be in high demand this year.  

The emergence of FinOps looking set to be one of the biggest cloud trends in 2023 and, as a result, employers will be keeping an eye out for candidates who can help organizations implement financial governance on the cloud through strategies and technologies that ensure they can better monitor and optimize their cloud spending. 

6. AI and Machine Learning 

When asking AWS professionals what areas they had experience in, machine learning (ML) came out bottom – with just 18% of candidates reporting skills in this area.  

But this could be a fantastic opportunity to make your resume to stand out from the crowd—especially with AI and ML becoming increasingly hot topics of conversation.  

As AI and ML solutions become more capable and impressive, organizations are keen to capitalize on cloud solutions early, from creating hyper-personalized customer experiences to enhanced automation and security.  

As a result, candidates competent in AI and ML should be sure to highlight this on their resume—employers are very much on the hunt for professionals who can help them leverage these tools for greater innovation and growth.  

7. DevOps

DevOps automates moving code from development to production while automating tasks such as monitoring, testing, integration, and deployment. DevOps is focused on continuous development, integration, and deployment, which directly benefits the SaaS applications that thrive on cloud computing. 

It’s not surprising that those in the AWS community would place such a high value on DevOps skills: the size of the global DevOps market is expected to balloon to almost $13bn by 2025. 

When we analysed over 2,500 AWS jobs secured with Jefferson Frank, we found that these are the DevOps- and Big Data-related skills that are most frequently requested by employers: 

  1. Python  
  2. Java  
  3. Terraform 
  4. Kubernetes  
  5. React.JS  
  6. Docker 
  7. JavaScript 
  8. Node.JS 
  9. Jenkins 
  10. Golang (Go) 

The ultimate resource on careers and hiring trends in the AWS community.

The Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition provides a unique insight into the Amazon Web Services community.

Download the guide

AWS insights now

Get the latest AWS news and views delivered straight to your inbox

We'd love to send you Jefferson Frank’s AWS insights and tips by email, phone or other electronic means.