Day In The Life Of An AWS Senior Cloud Application Architect

1. Title/ProServe team:?Sr Cloud Application Architect - AWS Professional Services

2. Tell us about yourself: ?

My name is William Gustave. I am originally from Brooklyn, NY, and I currently reside in New Jersey.?I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from CUNY Brooklyn College. My interest in computer programming began with trying to comprehend how games were created for the Atari 2600. I started my professional career at a consulting company mainly doing Y2K remediation.?Starting from 1999 onwards, my appreciation for application development grew even more. I primarily worked with Java using various design patterns and frameworks, mainly in the financial sector. ?At Amazon Web Services (AWS), I felt like a kid in a candy store with the vast abundance of resources available. ?Utilizing all the opportunities for growth that were available, I studied and became AWS certified.?Currently, I am working with customers to support them in their Cloud Journey, whether it is providing Advisory services, developing solutions, POCs, and more; I am there to support the customer. ??

Outside of work, I love spending time outdoors, skiing, dancing, museums, and traveling the world. I am always down for some good food, and trying different cuisines! My usual go-to cuisines are Caribbean, Indian, and everything Haitian! ?

3. Tell us about your role: ?

Being a Cloud Application Architect allows me to make an impact daily by creating custom solutions for our customers.?I am part of a wonderful team that delivers results for our customers. On my engagements thus far, the team size can vary, usually ranging from 3 to about 20 consultants across all workstreams; ?I tend to gravitate towards application migration projects. My favorite projects tend to involve Refactoring / Re-architecting or Replatforming existing system, and breaking monolithic applications into microservices. ?

Outside of the project work for my customers, I allocate time to do team-building activities, hiring, mentoring, internal trainings, emails, etc. I am currently studying to join the Technical Field Community (TFC) focused on containers, ?this will allow me to have a deeper understanding of our offerings and give feedback to the product teams from my interactions with customers.

??4. What is your typical day- Morning/noon/afternoon (Special activities, responsibilities, fun facts)??

Normally, I start my day at 5:30 AM. I enjoy going to the gym early in the morning in order to start my day with my endorphins flowing, which helps to get me energized and focused for the day ahead. Once I return, I have breakfast while listening to Kompa music (a popular form of jazz-based dance music popular in Haiti). I then review my calendar, respond to emails and prepare for the day’s meetings. After that, I then review the trainings which are available.?

Afternoons are usually when I attend daily Scrum meetings, hiring activities, and mentoring new colleagues. We have an internal meeting with the AWS team to discuss project progress and any course corrections. If required, I will reach out to Subject Matter Experts (SME) to discuss different approaches to creating a solution, whether they may be changes to the Architecture, or something lower level as recommending a library to use.??

Some of my other responsibilities include mentoring new hires as an on-boarding buddy, and conducting interviews. My day tends to end at 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM.?

5. What do you like most about working for AWS? Did you have any inspiring moments??

I have been at AWS for 5? years now and it is still Day 1; the opportunities for personal growth are amazing here! AWS professional Services gives me the opportunity to learn something new daily. During the year, working with different customers allows me to build innovative solutions to support their migration to the cloud.?

People at AWS are really smart, ambitious, curious and passionate about building solutions, and I love that we frequently collaborate with each other, and that I can reach out to the various internal technical communities within the organization. Lastly but not least, we have a bunch of internal and external tools to support our learnings.?

6. What is your favorite leadership principal and why?

At AWS we constantly work with all the leadership principles (LP), but I find that all of those principles tend to bubble up to support Customer Obsession LP.?Customer Obsession is defined as, “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards”; they work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. That being said, my favorite principles are “Earn Trust”, and “Dive Deep”.??

Earn Trust - I spend the time it takes to understand the customer’s problem, place myself in their shoes and work backwards to deliver a solution. Being transparent allows me to earn the trust of the customers and peers.?

Dive Deep - Allows me to understand the customer’s problem by diving into the details through workshops and working sessions. I collect the metrics and use a data driven approach to support the solution.?