AWS for Backend Engineers

AWS has 200+ services. You need maybe 15 of them to build production backend systems. This crash course cuts through the noise and teaches the AWS services, patterns, and tradeoffs that backend engineers actually use every day.

No “click this button in the console” tutorials. This is AWS the way engineers think about it — architecturally.

What This Course Covers

Fifteen lessons that take you from “I know backend development” to “I can architect on AWS”:

1. AWS Core Concepts Every Developer Needs — Regions, AZs, the service model, and the mental framework for thinking about cloud
2. IAM — Roles, Policies, Least Privilege — The permission system that gates everything else
3. Lambda — When to Use It and When Not To — Serverless compute with honest tradeoff analysis
4. SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge — Choosing Right — AWS messaging services and when each one wins
5. S3 — Beyond Basic Storage — Object storage as an architecture building block
6. DynamoDB — Data Modeling That Actually Works — NoSQL done right with single-table design
7. API Gateway — Patterns and Pitfalls — Request routing, auth, throttling, and the sharp edges
8. CloudWatch — Building Real Observability — Metrics, logs, alarms, and dashboards that actually help
9. VPC — Networking for Developers — Subnets, security groups, NAT, and connectivity patterns
10. AWS Security Best Practices — Defense in depth for production workloads
11. Cost Optimization — Stop Wasting Money — Practical strategies to cut your AWS bill
12. Serverless vs Containers on AWS — Lambda vs ECS vs Fargate decision framework
13. CI/CD on AWS — CodePipeline to ECS — Automated deployment pipelines on AWS
14. Multi-Region Architecture on AWS — Global availability and disaster recovery patterns
15. Real Project — Build a Serverless API — Putting it all together with a complete build

Who Is This For?

• Backend engineers moving workloads to AWS
• Developers who use AWS at work but don’t understand the “why” behind architecture decisions
• Engineers preparing for AWS-heavy system design interviews
• Anyone tired of clicking through the AWS console without understanding the underlying patterns

Prerequisites

• Solid backend development experience (any language)
• Basic understanding of HTTP, REST APIs, and databases
• Familiarity with command-line tools
• An AWS account (free tier is enough for all examples)