Certification on Maceage's Blog

AWS Generative AI Developer - Professional

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Almost two years after finishing my original eight-certification journey, I’ve added the AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional to the list. With how quickly GenAI has evolved, this felt like the natural next step.

I prepared using Stephane Maarek’s Ultimate AWS Certified Generative AI Developer Professional course on Udemy, switching platforms midway for deeper hands-on labs with emerging services.

These notes focus on the GenAI-specific concepts – the places where traditional AWS knowledge doesn’t fully carry you. If you’re tackling this exam, I hope they save you some pain.

AWS Machine Learning Specialty

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional exam. Then I did something arguably harder: I tackled the AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty with almost no prior machine learning experience.

Of the six certifications I’ve earned, this was the one I felt least prepared for. Not because the material is impossible – but because unlike networking or compute services, I couldn’t lean on day-to-day engineering experience to fill the gaps. Everything here came from studying the official AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty learning path on Pluralsight, and these notes are what I captured along the way.

AWS Solutions Architect - Professional

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After earning the Advanced Networking Specialty, the Solutions Architect – Professional exam was the natural next rung on the ladder – and, honestly, one of the more demanding ones. It’s less about memorising services and more about knowing which service trade-offs to recommend when a scenario hands you a broken architecture and five ways to fix it.

These notes come from working through the AWS Solutions Architect – Professional path on Pluralsight. They’re organised around the exam’s major themes: data stores, networking, security, migration, scaling, resilience, operations, and cost. I’ve kept them flash-card dense on purpose – that’s how I learn – but I’ve flagged the traps and decision points that seem to show up repeatedly.

AWS Advanced Networking Specialty

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After passing the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional, I decided to take the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional route – but with a detour first. Networking underpins almost everything in the SA Pro exam, so I sat the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty first to shore up the foundations.

These are my study notes from the AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty path on Pluralsight.

Fair warning: they’re the longest set of notes I’ve ever taken, because the exam domain is genuinely enormous – from BGP path selection to GENEVE encapsulation. I’ve organised them by the exam’s four domains, and I’ve flagged the things that tripped me up along the way.

AWS DevOps Engineer - Professional

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After passing the AWS Certified Security – Specialty, I decided to take on the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional.

On the road to this one, I studied the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional path on Pluralsight and kept notes on the concepts that finally made things click for me.

Since I’d already covered the fundamentals in earlier certifications, these notes skip the basics and focus on the advanced, exam-critical material.

If they help you too, great – here they are, organised by the exam’s main domains.

AWS Security Specialty

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from my Associate certifications, I tackled the AWS Certified Security – Specialty as my next milestone. Security felt like a natural progression given my growing focus on infrastructure protection, and honestly, this exam rewards hands-on familiarity more than any Associate-level test I’ve taken.

These are my study notes, organised by the exam’s five domains: threat detection and incident response, security logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection.

AWS Associate Certifications

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve started my AWS certification journey and I’ve been working through the three AWS Associate certifications on Pluralsight:

I deliberately started with SysOps and Developer to build practical, hands-on depth before moving on to the broader architectural concepts in Solutions Architect. These are my condensed notes – the key concepts and exam tips that stuck with me. Since I already had a solid grasp of the fundamentals, this page is lighter than a full course summary, but I hope it complements your own study plan.

Getting AWS Certified

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

During my tenure at Xero, I never really had the opportunity to properly work with Amazon Web Services.

As a product engineer, these responsibilities usually tended to lie with internal Platform Engineering teams. As a hypergrowth company, my main focus was more on delivering new features and value to our customers than managing the underlying infrastructure.

To complicate matters, Xero’s environment was a lift-and-shift migration from Rackspace to AWS. By the time I joined, the transition to the cloud was well underway, and the organisation had its own way of structuring the underlying architecture.