This article is based on reporting originally published by Firstpost, covering announcements made at AWS re:Invent 2018 in Las Vegas.
The Cloud Skills Shortage Is Real
Cloud computing has become central to how modern businesses operate, yet a significant skills gap persists across the industry. Tech companies worldwide are struggling to find qualified cloud professionals, and the demand for talent is outpacing the supply of trained workers. It is against this backdrop that Amazon Web Services (AWS) moved to expand its AWS Educate programme — shifting its focus from purely providing training and certification to actively connecting skilled students with potential employers.
The announcement was made by Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector at AWS, at the AWS re:Invent 2018 conference in Las Vegas.
What Is AWS Educate?
AWS Educate is a global initiative designed to give students and educators access to the resources they need to accelerate cloud-related learning. The programme combines several key components:
- Hands-on training – Students gain practical experience with AWS services through labs and projects, rather than purely theoretical study.
- Free cloud credits – Participants receive AWS cloud credits directly into their accounts, enabling them to experiment with real infrastructure at no personal cost.
- Content from leading institutions – Course material is drawn from top computer science institutions around the world.
- Career pathways – The programme offers nearly 30 career pathways grouped into four broad job families: Big Data and Analytics, Cloud Architecture, Systems and Engineering Support, and Software and Web Development.
Connecting Students Directly With Employers
The most significant expansion announced at re:Invent 2018 was the addition of a job-matching layer within AWS Educate. According to Carlson, there were hundreds of thousands of open positions in cloud computing at the time of the announcement. To help address this, AWS Educate was updated to allow students to connect with over 30 potential employers — including Amazon itself.
A tool called Interview Accelerator was also introduced within the platform. Its purpose is to help candidates move through the job application process more efficiently, reducing the time between qualification and employment.
Scale and Adoption
By the time of the re:Invent 2018 announcement, AWS Educate had reached considerable scale globally:
- More than 1,500 institutions had joined the programme.
- Over 10,000 educators were participating.
- The programme spans multiple countries and is designed for students at various stages of their education.
India Focus: Andhra Pradesh’s Cloud Upskilling Initiative
India was highlighted as a particularly important market for the AWS Educate expansion, given the country’s own acute shortage of skilled cloud and emerging technology professionals. Industry body Nasscom had reported (as of July 2018) that approximately 1.4 lakh (140,000) positions in AI and Big Data Analytics remained unfilled in India, out of an estimated total demand of 5.1 lakh (510,000) employees in those segments.
The state of Andhra Pradesh launched a cloud skills initiative in partnership with AWS, targeting:
- 60,000 students to be trained across more than 300 engineering and non-engineering colleges in the state by 2020.
- A 2017 pilot run by the Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) had already enrolled more than 10,000 students from engineering colleges into Cloud Career Pathways.
- By September 2018, over 13,000 students had enrolled from approximately 130 non-engineering colleges.
The Cloud Career Pathway framework underpinning this initiative provides 12 self-paced learning tracks aligned to real-world labour market trends. Students can apply their knowledge to specific cloud roles and demonstrate readiness to prospective employers.
Open Data for Researchers
Beyond student upskilling, Carlson also highlighted AWS’s efforts to support the research community. AWS had recently added 19 new datasets to its AWS Open Data Registry, spanning domains from healthcare to space science.
Data published through the Open Data Registry can be accessed and analysed by anyone using AWS compute and analytics tools, including:
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- Amazon Athena
- AWS Lambda
- Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR)
The core benefit of making these datasets publicly accessible in the cloud is that researchers can spend more of their time on analysis and less on the logistical challenges of acquiring and storing raw data.
What This Means for Cloud Career Seekers
The evolution of AWS Educate from a training programme into a full talent pipeline — covering learning, certification, and job matching — reflects how seriously cloud providers are treating the skills gap problem. For students and early-career professionals looking to enter the cloud industry, this creates a more structured path:
- Enrol in AWS Educate and choose a career pathway aligned to your interests.
- Complete hands-on training and accumulate AWS credits to build real project experience.
- Use the Interview Accelerator to engage directly with employers recruiting for cloud roles.
- Leverage AWS certifications as a credible signal of technical competence to hiring managers.
AWS also announced plans to host its flagship Public Sector Summit in New Delhi in 2019, underlining the strategic importance of the Indian market in its global expansion efforts.
Source: Firstpost — Amazon Web Services to help skilled students find Cloud computing jobs (November 2018)