Really what you want to learn is architecture and systems engineering. AWS is just a collection of SaaS tools that you use to build a solution. They all have th

Really what you want to learn is architecture and systems engineering. AWS is just a collection of SaaS tools that you use to build a solution. They all have their own qualities which some other systems share. Actually using AWS is like becoming a plumber; you're just connecting pieces together. The more important part is understanding what the underlying design is and why you would use one piece of technology or another in a given solution. To answer your question: I don't think you're going to gain a whole lot out of the certification, but if it leads you to better understand how to build distributed systems, it couldn't hurt. Try to focus more on understanding the underlying concepts than the way AWS implements something. (Learning "the way AWS does it" is often a shitload of extra work which doesn't contribute to helping you understand how to design and operate systems) Also fwiw, think of the word "DevOps" is a word that means 'the practice of technocultural collaboration'. There is no 'dev ops', but there is systems operations, systems engineering, systems architecture, systems administration. It doesn't really have to do with development, even if there is sometimes quasi-programming or developer-like concepts involved. Sometimes I think I should start a computer systems engineering & operations school... It's a really deep set of topics that there aren't good books about.