If you moved your apps to AWS, you made a strategic choice for scalability. However, without specialized technical proficiency, cloud environments can become plagued by costs and security gaps. The one way to overcome those challenges is to have AWS developer skills in your team. These specialists design and maintain infrastructure to help businesses gain an advantage from their AWS investments.
According to AWS’s data, 1.05 million people hold AWS certifications, yet demand for skilled cloud professionals continues to outpace supply. The platform runs 32% of the global cloud infrastructure market, making AWS expertise one of the most sought-after skill sets in tech.
In this guide, you’ll find out the 16 key AWS developer skills and qualifications needed for modern cloud teams in 2025. So, let’s get started!
AWS developer skills refer to the technical capabilities needed to design, build, deploy, and optimize applications on Amazon Web Services. These professionals use cloud-based tools to develop solutions that run on AWS infrastructure.
As of late 2025, the platform offers over 264 products and services across 19 categories, from computing power to AI tools. Of course, AWS developers don’t need to master every single tool, but they should understand core services and how they connect.
Here is a quick overview of what AWS cloud developer skills look like:
The specific AWS developer skill sets vary by project type. A specialist working on a serverless application needs different expertise than someone building containerized microservices. However, the foundation is the same across all AWS career path options.
Let’s take a further look at the most in-demand skills required for AWS developers step-by-step.
AWS provides two primary tools for interacting with its services: the Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Command Line Interface (CLI). Both allow developers to control AWS resources programmatically.
The AWS SDK supports multiple programming languages, including:
Developers use it to integrate AWS services directly into their application code. For example, they can write a Python script that automatically triggers Lambda functions in response to specific events.
The AWS CLI, meanwhile, lets AWS developers manage cloud resources from their terminal. This command-line tool supports all AWS services and enables automation through shell scripts.
Another critical skill for any AWS developer is the ability to design cloud architectures. It covers the decision-making about compute resources, storage solutions, networking configurations, and service integrations. An AWS developer needs to balance performance requirements against budget constraints while ensuring the system can handle growth.
The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides six pillars that guide these design decisions:
Experienced developers should have relevant AWS cloud skills to apply these principles to their architecture design.
Now let’s take a closer look at the fundamental AWS services. They appear in virtually every cloud project, making them non-negotiable skills for AWS developer candidates.
Compute
EC2
Virtual server hosting with full OS control (CPU, memory, and storage)
Lambda
Serverless function execution in response to events without managing servers
Storage
S3
Scalable object storage for any file type and any amount of data
Database
RDS
Managed relational database service (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and MariaDB)
DynamoDB
Managed NoSQL key-value and document database
Networking
VPC
Isolated cloud network for resource control
Elastic Load Balancer
Traffic distribution across multiple instances or containers
Security
IAM
User, role, and permission management across services
Monitoring
CloudWatch
Logs, metrics, and alarms for AWS resources
Messaging
SQS
Fully managed message queuing service for decoupling distributed systems
SNS
Pub/sub messaging service for sending notifications to multiple subscribers
DevOps
CodePipeline
Orchestration for CI/CD workflows
CodeBuild
Fully managed build service for compiling source code
CodeDeploy
Deployment service for applications on EC2, Lambda, or ECS
Deployment
CloudFormation
Infrastructure as Code service that provisions resources using templates
Container
ECS
Orchestration service for running Docker containers
ECR
Fully managed Docker container registry
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As we mentioned in the context of AWS SDKs, AWS developers use multiple programming languages depending on the services and project requirements. Each language has strengths for particular use cases. Let’s take a detailed look.
Besides programming proficiency, a skilled AWS developer should understand how to build APIs. They might design traditional REST APIs using Amazon API Gateway and Lambda. Or they might use a more modern approach, such as GraphQL with AWS AppSync.
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that bring together development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams. In AWS, this is put into practice using CI/CD pipelines, which stand for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment.
Think of a CI/CD pipeline as a fully automated “assembly line” for your software. When an AWS developer commits new code, the pipeline automatically builds it, runs a battery of tests, and then deploys it to your users.
Common AWS DevOps skills include proficiency with AWS CodePipeline (to model the workflow), AWS CodeBuild (to build and test code), and AWS CodeDeploy (to deploy the application). AWS developers also frequently integrate popular third-party tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI.
In the past, setting up a new server was a manual, error-prone process. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) simplifies the setup, allowing engineers to define all infrastructure (servers, databases, networks, and firewalls) in configuration files or code.
The primary AWS-native tool for IaC is AWS CloudFormation. However, many AWS developers prefer to use Terraform, which is cloud-agnostic, or the AWS Cloud Development Kit, which lets them define cloud resources as code.
Moving forward, let’s discuss containerization and orchestration as part of the AWS developer skill set. First, AWS developers “package” their application and all its dependencies into a “container” (most commonly using Docker). This container acts like a sealed box, ensuring the application runs identically both on the developer’s laptop and in production.
Then, they need an “orchestrator” to manage thousands of these containers. To orchestrate an application, AWS developers need skills in Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) or Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service). Also, many serverless AWS developers now use AWS Fargate.
Security on AWS is a shared responsibility. While AWS secures the physical data centers, your developer is responsible for securing everything you build in the cloud. So, what security skills are required for AWS developer roles? They need to understand identity management, encryption, network security, and AWS-specific compliance requirements.
AWS developer skills must include IAM (Identity and Access Management), which is the core of AWS security. They must demonstrate a “least privilege” mindset, ensuring that an application has only the exact permissions it needs to function.
Database expertise is fundamental to the AWS developer skills required for modern applications. As projects demand different data models and performance characteristics, developers need knowledge spanning both relational and NoSQL databases.
AWS developers should be skilled in the three core data services:
While an AWS developer doesn’t need to be a network engineer, they cannot be effective without understanding the fundamentals of networking.
As a base, AWS developer skills should include a firm grasp of Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud). They must be skilled in connecting their VPCs to the internet and other networks, both public and private.
Besides, AWS developers should understand general networking fundamentals, including:
A skilled serverless AWS developer must be proficient with AWS Lambda. They should be able to write and manage compute functions in languages like Node.js, Python, Java, or C#. Also, a specialist needs to know how to handle triggers and configure runtime environments.
Crucially, an AWS developer’s skill set must include building event-driven architectures in which decoupled services communicate via events. It requires a deep understanding of:
Because AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go model, every architectural decision has a direct financial impact. A modern AWS developer must be “cost-conscious.” They should proactively choose the most appropriate service for the job and practice “right-sizing” (e.g., selecting the smallest, least expensive server that can handle the load).
Experienced AWS developers should also be familiar with AWS Budgets to set alerts and with AWS Cost Explorer to analyze cost drivers.
Effective AWS developers use monitoring tools to ensure application health and performance. They must be skilled with Amazon CloudWatch for collecting metrics and logs, and for setting up alarms that automatically respond to operational issues.
For distributed systems and microservices, AWS developer skills should include proficiency in AWS X-Ray. The tool enables end-to-end tracing and the identification of performance bottlenecks. Furthermore, knowledge of AWS CloudTrail is essential for security auditing and compliance.
Many AWS projects involve moving existing applications from a company’s private data center to the cloud. If your project is one of them, look for candidates who can discuss the different migration strategies.
For example, a simple “Rehost” (or “lift-and-shift,” where an old server is just copied to an AWS server) versus a more complex “Refactor” (where the application is re-written to use cloud-native services like Lambda and S3). Understanding when to apply each strategy is key.
Moreover, practical experience with tools like AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) facilitates the rehosting process. More critically, they must know how to decouple monolithic applications and refactor components into microservices or serverless functions.
While not every AWS developer is a data engineer, they often build applications that either produce or consume massive amounts of data. So, they should be familiar with the foundational data services.
For data warehousing, the AWS developer should be familiar with Amazon Redshift, a fast and fully managed cloud data warehouse.
AWS developers are now expected to integrate artificial intelligence into their applications. AWS provides two distinct paths for this.
For developers who want to use powerful, pre-trained models (like those that power ChatGPT), AWS offers Amazon Bedrock. It’s a managed service that provides simple API access to a range of Generative AI models. An AWS developer can use this to quickly add features like text summarization, image generation, or chatbots to an application.
For AWS developers and data scientists who need to build, train, and deploy their own custom machine learning models, Amazon SageMaker is available. It’s a comprehensive platform that covers the entire ML lifecycle, from labeling data to hosting the trained model.
There you have it! You now understand what AWS developer skills matter most and how to evaluate candidates for your cloud projects. Use this guide when writing your AWS developer job description, screening CVs, or conducting technical interviews.
If you want to learn more about how to hire AWS developers or need help finding the right talent, just reach out. DOIT Software can connect you with pre-vetted AWS experts who will possess the exact skills your project requires. Get matched with senior-screened talent in 5 business days!
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Request CVsThe AWS basics cover understanding cloud computing models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), AWS’s global infrastructure, including regions and availability zones, and hands-on experience with fundamental services (e.g., EC2, S3, Lambda, and RDS). New developers typically start with these fundamentals before moving on to more specialized services, such as serverless computing or data engineering jobs.
AWS certifications provide valuable signals about a developer’s knowledge, but should not be the sole hiring criterion. For example, the AWS Certified Developer Associate certification validates skills in developing, optimizing, packaging, and deploying applications, as well as using CI/CD workflows.
However, practical experience building and maintaining production applications often matters more than certifications alone. A developer with 2-3 years of hands-on AWS experience may bring more value than a recently certified candidate with limited real-world projects.
While the terms overlap, an AWS engineer skills profile often emphasizes deeper infrastructure management, networking design (VPC configuration), and large-scale DevOps automation (CI/CD pipeline creation).
A developer focuses primarily on writing and deploying application code and on using AWS APIs and SDKs to integrate services. In high-growth environments, the roles often merge, requiring AWS developers to possess strong engineering fundamentals alongside software development skills.
