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What is the average salary of an AWS Solutions Architect Associate?

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What is the average salary of an AWS Solutions Architect Associate?

Cloud computing has become the norm in most businesses, and the Amazon Web Services platform is one of the most popular for business scalability and growth. It is natural for IT professionals to search for certifications in order to improve their skill sets. The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam is an excellent place to begin learning about cloud computing.

No one could have predicted how quickly Amazon Web Service (AWS) would grow in importance when it was first introduced five years ago. AWS has steadily grown to become one of the most popular cloud platforms in such a short period of time. Throughout 2018, AWS remained the dominant cloud service provider, and it finished the fourth quarter of the same year in the same position. According to the most recent market share reports, Amazon Web Service continues to outperform the competition. Let us look at average salary of an AWS Solutions Architect Associate!

How much does an AWS Solutions Architect Associate make on average?

As the demand for Amazon web services certified professionals grows, so do their salaries and benefits. Solution Architects in India earn an average annual salary of $24,55,000. AWS solutions architect certification is reported to be the highest-paying certification in the United States, with an average annual salary of $118,266. Outside of the United States, countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and India are excellent places to work for AWS solution architects. Here is the detailed salary that a professional may get according to their experience –


Beginner (1-4 years)Mid-career (5-9 years)Experienced (10-19 years)Late career (20+ years)
United Kingdom£48,527£57,232£64,013£65,747
Malaysia RM. 116,000RM 146,290RM 164,983
Singapore S$ 53,000S$110,538S$109,293S$179,399
India Rs 674,000Rs 13,85,844Rs 19,49,574Rs 24,93,285
CanadaC$89,247C$99,395C$103,896C$114,138
Australia AU$103,410AU$124,514AU$130,584AU$141,361
UAEAED 155,000AED 212,958AED 305,070AED 478,895

In order to grab this fancy job and the package, you must know about the right resources that can help you get certified. So, let us take you to a certification path that can help you ace the exam in one go!

AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification Path

The AWS Solution Architect Associate Exam is designed for solution architects with credible hands-on design experience. The certification exam assesses the ability to deploy secure and scalable applications on AWS. The certification qualifies you as an AWS Solution Architect, validating your skills in design scalability, data ingress, and egress to and from AWS, AWS services based on data, security, computing, and so on. Let us look at how can you ace the exam in one go –

Step 1- Know about the exam Details

The certification is best suited to candidates who work as system engineers, developers, enterprise architects, or solutions architects. The examination includes two types of questions: multiple choice responses with one correct answer out of four options, and multiple response questions with two correct answers out of five alternatives. It is critical that the candidate answers all of the questions because there is no negative marking for incorrect answers; however, an unanswered question is considered a wrong answer. Certain unscored content may be included in the exam for survey purposes. These have no effect on the test outcome.

Step 2- Know about the exam Objectives

It is important to know the exam objectives so that you get a clear idea so as to know what are the parameters on which the exam will test you –

Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design secure access to AWS resources.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Task Statement 2: Design secure workloads and applications.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Task Statement 3: Determine appropriate data security controls.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

  • Designing event-driven, microservice, and/or multi-tier architectures based on requirements (AWS Documentation: Event-Driven Architecture)
  • Determining scaling strategies for components used in an architecture design
  • also, Determining the AWS services required to achieve loose coupling based on requirements (AWS Documentation: Loosely Coupled Scenarios)
  • Determining when to use containers (AWS Documentation: Determining task size)
  • also, Determining when to use serverless technologies and patterns
  • Recommending appropriate compute, storage, networking, and database technologies based on requirements
  • Using purpose-built AWS services for workloads (AWS Documentation: Database)
Task Statement 2: Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

  • Determining automation strategies to ensure infrastructure integrity (AWS Documentation: Protecting Compute)
  • Determining the AWS services required to provide a highly available and/or fault-tolerant architecture across AWS Regions or Availability Zones (AWS Documentation: Architecture guidelines and decisions)
  • Identifying metrics based on business requirements to deliver a highly available solution
  • Implementing designs to mitigate single points of failure (AWS Documentation: Withstand Component Failures)
  • Implementing strategies to ensure the durability and availability of data (for example, backups)
  • Selecting an appropriate DR strategy to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR))
  • Using AWS services that improve the reliability of legacy applications and applications not built for the cloud (for example, when application changes are not possible)
  • Using purpose-built AWS services for workloads (AWS Documentation: Database)
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures
Task Statement 1: Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • Hybrid storage solutions to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Hybrid Cloud Storage)
  • Storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS]) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
  • Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block)

Skills in:

  • Determining storage services and configurations that meet performance demands (AWS Documentation: Storage Architecture Selection)
  • Determining storage services that can scale to accommodate future needs (AWS Documentation: Storage)
Task Statement 2: Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • AWS compute services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Batch, Amazon EMR, Fargate) (AWS Documentation: AWS Batch on AWS Fargate, Compute Services)
  • Distributed computing concepts supported by AWS global infrastructure and edge services (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
  • Queuing and messaging concepts (for example, publish/subscribe) (AWS Documentation: Pub/Sub Messaging)
  • Scalability capabilities with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, AWS Auto Scaling) (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
  • Serverless technologies and patterns (for example, Lambda, Fargate) (AWS Documentation: Serverless)
  • The orchestration of containers (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS) (AWS Documentation: Orchestrating the containers)

Skills in:

  • Decoupling workloads so that components can scale independently (AWS Documentation: Event-Driven Architecture)
  • Identifying metrics and conditions to perform scaling actions (AWS Documentation: Monitor CloudWatch metrics)
  • Selecting the appropriate compute options and features (for example, EC2 instance types) to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Instance Types)
  • Selecting the appropriate resource type and size (for example, the amount of Lambda memory) to meet business requirements
Task Statement 3: Determine high-performing database solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions) (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
  • Caching strategies and services (for example, Amazon ElastiCache) (AWS Documentation: Caching strategies)
  • Data access patterns (for example, read-intensive compared with write-intensive) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
  • also, Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units, instance types, Provisioned IOPS)
  • Database connections and proxies (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon RDS Proxy)
  • also, Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations, homogeneous migrations) (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration)
  • Database replication (for example, read replicas) (AWS Documentation: Working with read replicas)
  • also, Database types and services (for example, serverless, relational compared with non-relational, in-memory) (AWS Documentation: Database)

Skills in:

  • Configuring read replicas to meet business requirements
  • Designing database architectures (AWS Documentation: Database Architecture Selection)
  • also, Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with PostgreSQL) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
  • Determining an appropriate database type (for example, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB)
  • Integrating caching to meet business requirements
Task Statement 4: Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures.

Knowledge of:

  • Edge networking services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator) (AWS Documentation: Edge networking with AWS)
  • How to design network architecture (for example, subnet tiers, routing, IP addressing) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT))
  • Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
  • Network connection options (for example, AWS VPN, Direct Connect, AWS PrivateLink) (AWS Documentation: AWS Direct Connect)

Skills in:

Task Statement 5: Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • Access options (for example, an S3 bucket with Requester Pays object storage) (AWS Documentation: Using Requester Pays buckets for storage transfers and usage)
  • AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
  • also, AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)
  • AWS storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon FSx, Amazon EFS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
  • Backup strategies (AWS Documentation: AWS Backup)
  • Block storage options (for example, hard disk drive [HDD] volume types, solid state drive [SSD] volume types) (AWS Documentation: Amazon EBS volume types)
  • Data lifecycles (AWS Documentation: Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager)
  • Hybrid storage options (for example, DataSync, Transfer Family, Storage Gateway)
  • Storage access patterns
  • also, Storage tiering (for example, cold tiering for object storage) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon S3 storage classes)
  • Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block) (AWS Documentation: Storage)

Skills in:

Task Statement 2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
  • also, AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Explorer)
  • also, AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions) (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
  • AWS purchasing options (for example, Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) (AWS Documentation: Instance purchasing options)
  • Distributed compute strategies (for example, edge processing) (AWS Documentation: Amazon SageMaker Distributed Training Libraries)
  • Hybrid compute options (for example, AWS Outposts, AWS Snowball Edge) (AWS Documentation: Compute Services)
  • Instance types, families, and sizes (for example, memory optimized, compute optimized, virtualization) (AWS Documentation: Memory optimized instances)
  • Optimization of compute utilization (for example, containers, serverless computing, microservices)
  • Scaling strategies (for example, auto scaling, hibernation) (AWS Documentation: Warm pools for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)

Skills in:

  • Determining an appropriate load balancing strategy (for example, Application Load Balancer [Layer 7] compared with Network Load Balancer [Layer 4] compared with Gateway Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Elastic Load Balancing FAQs)
  • Determining appropriate scaling methods and strategies for elastic workloads (for example, horizontal compared with vertical, EC2 hibernation) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for EC2 Spot)
  • also, Determining cost-effective AWS compute services with appropriate use cases (for example, Lambda, Amazon EC2, Fargate)
  • Determining the required availability for different classes of workloads (for example, production workloads, non-production workloads) (AWS Documentation: Workloads)
  • Selecting the appropriate instance family for a workload
  • Selecting the appropriate instance size for a workload (AWS Documentation: Tips for Right Sizing)
Task Statement 3: Design cost-optimized database solutions.

Knowledge of:

  • AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
  • AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Explorer)
  • Caching strategies (AWS Documentation: Caching strategies)
  • Data retention policies
  • Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units) (AWS Documentation: Read/write capacity mode)
  • Database connections and proxies (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon RDS Proxy)
  • also, Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations, homogeneous migrations) (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration)
  • Database replication (for example, read replicas) (AWS Documentation: Working with read replicas)
  • furthermore, Database types and services (for example, relational compared with non-relational, Aurora, DynamoDB) (AWS Documentation: Database)

Skills in:

  • Designing appropriate backup and retention policies (for example, snapshot frequency)
  • Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with PostgreSQL) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
  • also, Determining cost-effective AWS database services with appropriate use cases (for example, DynamoDB compared with Amazon RDS, serverless)
  • Determining cost-effective AWS database types (for example, time series format, columnar format) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cloud Databases)
  • Migrating database schemas and data to different locations and/or different database engines (AWS Documentation: Best practices for AWS Database Migration Service)
Task Statement 4: Design cost-optimized network architectures.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

  • Configuring appropriate NAT gateway types for a network (for example, a single shared NAT gateway compared with NAT gateways for each Availability Zone) (AWS Documentation: NAT gateways)
  • Configuring appropriate network connections (for example, Direct Connect compared with VPN compared with internet) (AWS Documentation: AWS Direct Connect FAQs)
  • also, Configuring appropriate network routes to minimize network transfer costs (for example, Region to Region, Availability Zone to Availability Zone, private to public, Global Accelerator, VPC endpoints)
  • Determining strategic needs for content delivery networks (CDNs) and edge caching (AWS Documentation: Working with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs))
  • Reviewing existing workloads for network optimizations (AWS Documentation: Optimize over time)
  • Selecting an appropriate throttling strategy (AWS Documentation: Throttle API requests for better throughput)
  • Selecting the appropriate bandwidth allocation for a network device (for example, a single VPN compared with multiple VPNs, Direct Connect speed) (AWS Documentation: Site-to-Site VPN single and multiple connection)
Step 3- Refer to AWS WhitePapers

AWS’s white papers are based on customer interactions and cover the general practical aspects of pestilence on the job. For a thorough understanding of AWS systems, read the white papers thoroughly. The white papers also frame the exams, so regardless of your experience or lack thereof with AWS systems, you must go over these readings.

Step 4 – Go for Training with an instructor

AWS certifications are mostly practical and rely heavily on experience and training. Practical hands-on training can help you become acquainted with design, deployment, AWS services, and systems. Online forums, video training, and courses are readily available and provide additional information on the objectives, topics, and overall exam blueprint.

Step 5 – Use Amazon Web Services YouTube Channel

The AWS Youtube Channel publishes content that covers in-depth information and focuses on exam-related topics. There are interesting presentations ranging from the introductory to the rather advanced level. The videos can be quick and effective for raising awareness and learning.

Step 6 – Evaluate with Practice Tests

AWS provides sample questions that can be downloaded from their official website. It is critical that you review these questions in order to gain a better understanding of the exam questions. Unfortunately, AWS does not provide enough practice questions. Practice tests are useful for determining your level of preparation and getting a feel for the examination before you take it. Online, you can easily find practice exams and mock tests geared toward practical knowledge. AWS provides ten sample questions for free and charges $20 for twenty sample questions. AWS sample questions are recommended for AWS exams; however, more questions are required for effective preparation.

Last Words

AWS Solutions Architect Certification Training, like all certifications, is significant and necessary only when you can demonstrate your practical skills. Aside from certificates, you must demonstrate during your interviews that you understand how to work within AWS and its application within businesses. Don’t just read books and watch videos; work inside the AWS console to break down multi-tier applications and solve them. The only way to demonstrate your ability to set up applications is to test architecture in an environment that mimics a real production environment.

Anandita Doda
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