Build AWS skills: Core AWS services for cloud professionals to learn

When someone first begins their cloud journey, it can feel intimidating trying to figure out where to start and what to focus on. 

Cloud is an incredibly broad space with many different career paths and specialties. On top of that, each hyperscaler offers hundreds of cloud services, along with adjacent areas of technology that are deeply connected to cloud, such as containers, Kubernetes, AI, automation, and even the programming languages and tools you choose to specialize in.

Because of this, it can be difficult to know what is actually worth learning and what skills will provide the most long-term value.

My advice? Become highly proficient in one cloud first. Once you build strong foundational cloud skills, many of those concepts transfer surprisingly well across other cloud platforms, with only some differences in terminology, tooling, and implementation.

In this article, we’ll explore the core AWS skills and services that are most valuable to learn as you begin your cloud journey.

I’ve grouped these services into four categories to create a clearer learning path as you begin your cloud journey. Even with the categories and structure, this may still feel like a lot to learn, and honestly, it is. Cloud is a massive space with many specialties and career paths.

That said, I intentionally organized these groupings in order of importance and foundational value. The earlier categories contain the most critical skills to learn first, and each grouping builds upon the previous one. If you’re wondering how to learn AWS step by step, think of this as a practical roadmap you can follow as you develop your cloud skills.

If you focus on learning these AWS skills in order, you’ll build a strong cloud foundation that can transfer across different technologies, tools, and even other cloud providers.

In any cloud platform, the core categories you want to understand well are networking, identity and access management (IAM), security, management, and governance. These areas form the foundation of cloud engineering and are critical regardless of the path you eventually specialize in.

Here are some AWS services that fall into these categories:

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows you to build isolated networks within AWS. It includes concepts like subnets, routing tables, gateways, private networking, and network security controls. 

Why learn it:

Networking is one of the most important foundational cloud skills. Nearly every AWS deployment depends on understanding how networking works.

Start with the Deploy a Network in AWS lab.

Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes traffic across multiple resources such as EC2 instances, containers, and applications. 

Why learn it:

Load balancing is a core concept for building scalable and highly available cloud applications. It also introduces key networking concepts such as Layer 4 and Layer 7 traffic management, application-aware routing, health probes, and intelligent request distribution, all of which are critical for optimizing performance and ensuring reliability. 

Amazon Route 53 is AWS’s Domain Name System (DNS) and domain management service used for routing internet traffic to applications and services.

Why learn it:

DNS is a foundational internet and cloud concept. Route 53 also introduces concepts like health checks, routing policies, failover, and global traffic management.

Learn more in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03): Core Services learning path.

AWS Transit Gateway simplifies connectivity between multiple VPCs, on-premises networks, and AWS accounts. 

Why learn it:

Transit Gateway introduces enterprise-scale networking architecture concepts and hub-and-spoke network design patterns commonly used in large organizations.

Get hands on and create an AWS Transit Gateway in this Configuring Transit Gateway lab.

AWS Direct Connect provides dedicated private network connectivity between on-premises environments and AWS. 

Why learn it:

Hybrid cloud connectivity is extremely common in enterprises. This service helps you understand low-latency networking, private connectivity, and enterprise infrastructure integration. 

AWS Site-to-Site VPN securely connects on-premises networks to AWS over encrypted VPN tunnels.

Why learn it:

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are a foundational networking and security concept that cloud engineers regularly encounter in real-world environments.

Learn more in the AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty (ANS-C01): Network Design course.

AWS PrivateLink enables private communication between VPCs and AWS services without traversing the public internet. 

Why learn it:

PrivateLink introduces you to zero-trust networking concepts and secure service-to-service communication patterns used in enterprise environments.

AWS Network Firewall is a managed network security service for inspecting and filtering traffic.

Why learn it:

It combines networking and security concepts and helps build foundational cloud security architecture skills. 

Get hands on with this Configuring an AWS Network Firewall lab.

IAM enables you to securely control access to AWS resources using users, groups, roles, and policies. 

Why learn it:

IAM is one of the most critical AWS services because security and permissions impact everything in the cloud. 

Learn more in the AWS IAM Core Concepts course.

AWS Organizations helps you manage multiple AWS accounts centrally with governance and policy controls. 

Why learn it:

Large enterprises almost always use multi-account strategies. Learning Organizations gives insight into real-world enterprise cloud architecture. 

Learn more in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03): Securing and Monitoring Workloads course.

AWS Control Tower helps organizations set up and govern secure multi-account AWS environments using best practices and automated guardrails.

Why learn it:

Control Tower introduces enterprise cloud governance concepts and demonstrates how organizations standardize account structure, compliance, security baselines, and operational controls at scale.

Learn more in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03): Securing and Monitoring Workloads course.

AWS Trusted Advisor analyzes AWS environments and provides recommendations related to cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and performance. 

Why learn it:

Trusted Advisor helps develop operational awareness and introduces important cloud optimization concepts around reliability, security, and cost management that are highly valuable in real-world environments.

Learn more in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03): Securing and Monitoring Workloads course.

AWS Config tracks resource configurations and compliance over time.

Why learn it:

It introduces governance and compliance concepts that are extremely important in enterprise cloud environments.

Start learning with the AWS CDK Security Best Practices course.

As you continue to learn AWS, it's best to expand into compute, storage, databases, and web technologies. These services represent the core building blocks used to run applications in the cloud.

Here are some AWS services that fall into these categories:

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides virtual machines in AWS.

Why learn it:

EC2 is foundational cloud infrastructure and helps you understand virtualization, scalability, networking, and operating systems in the cloud. 

Get hands-on with the Introduction to EC2 lab.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is highly scalable object storage for files, backups, websites, and data lakes. 

Why learn it:

S3 is one of the most widely used AWS services and is commonly integrated into countless cloud architectures.

Learn everything you need to know with the Amazon S3 learning path.

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) provides managed relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.

Why learn it:

Databases are central to modern applications, and RDS introduces managed database operations in the cloud.

Get hands-on in the Operate and Validate Amazon RDS Multi-AZ and Read Replica Transitions lab.

AWS Lambda is a compute service that allows you to run code without managing servers.

Why learn it:

Serverless computing is now mainstream and teaches event-driven architecture and cloud automation concepts.

Start learning with the AWS Lambda learning path.

Round out your knowledge with monitoring, cost management, and developer tools. These areas become increasingly important as cloud environments grow in size and complexity.

Here are some AWS services that fall into these categories:

CloudWatch provides monitoring, logging, metrics, and alerting for AWS resources and applications. 

Why learn it:

Monitoring and observability are essential operational skills for cloud engineers and DevOps professionals.

Start learning with the Amazon Connect - Troubleshooting with Amazon CloudWatch course.

AWS Cost Explorer helps you analyze and visualize cloud spending. 

Why learn it:

Cloud cost optimization, often called FinOps, is a major focus area for organizations today, and key to ensuring cloud ROI. 

Systems Manager helps manage and automate operations across AWS infrastructure. 

Why learn it:

It provides practical operational skills around automation, patching, configuration management, and administration. 

As a bonus, it’s beneficial to explore AI and cloud-native technologies. Cloud-native technologies include many tools and platforms that aren’t tied to a single cloud provider, but are deeply intertwined with modern cloud environments.

Here are some AWS services and technologies that fall into these categories:

Amazon Bedrock provides access to foundation models and generative AI capabilities through managed APIs. 

Why learn it:

Generative AI is rapidly becoming integrated into modern applications, workflows, and developer platforms.

Learn the essentials with the Amazon Bedrock learning path.

Amazon EKS is AWS’s managed Kubernetes platform. 

Why learn it:

Kubernetes has become a dominant platform for modern cloud-native applications. 

Start learning with the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) learning path.

Amazon ECS is a managed container orchestration service. 

Why learn it:

Containers are foundational to modern application deployment and DevOps workflows.

Docker is a platform for packaging and running applications in containers. 

Why learn it:

Docker skills transfer across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-premises environments.

Build your skills with the Docker learning path.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform. 

Why learn it:

Kubernetes skills are highly transferable and in demand across the cloud industry. 

Start learning with the Kubernetes learning path.

Another important area to learn as you progress in cloud is Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Infrastructure as Code allows you to define and deploy cloud infrastructure using code and templates instead of manually configuring resources through a web portal. This approach improves consistency, automation, scalability, and repeatability across environments.

Learning IaC early in your cloud journey is extremely valuable because it is widely used in modern cloud engineering, DevOps, and platform engineering practices.

In AWS, one of the core IaC services is AWS CloudFormation. CloudFormation allows you to deploy and manage AWS infrastructure using declarative templates. 

Get started with the AWS Infrastructure as Code with CloudFormation course.

One final thing worth mentioning is hands-on experience. One of the challenges for aspiring cloud professionals is that cloud access can become expensive over time. Fortunately, each major cloud provider offers free trials and credits, and I highly recommend taking advantage of those while learning. Learn more about the AWS trial.

Once your trial credits run out, another great option is the Pluralsight cloud sandboxes that provide temporary access to major cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. These environments are a great way to gain practical hands-on experience without needing to maintain your own cloud subscription.

Good luck on your cloud learning journey!

Learn more about Pluralsight cloud and AI sandboxes.