Announcing the Udacity AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Nanodegree

I’m excited to share that Udacity has released its AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Nanodegree program (AWS SAA). 

This program is built for learners who want to move beyond memorizing service definitions and instead develop practical architecture judgment: how to design secure, scalable, resilient, high-performing—and cost-efficient—solutions that align with real business constraints. Over roughly 60 hours at an intermediate level, the Nanodegree is structured as five focused courses with hands-on projects designed to reinforce exam readiness with applied, scenario-based practice. 

I had the opportunity to serve as one of four authors alongside the amazing Mike Hammond, Joseph Nicolls, and Ajay Gulani. I authored Course 3 (Design High-Performing Architectures on AWS) of the nano-degree. High performance in AWS isn’t about “bigger instances” or isolated tuning—it’s about making intentional architecture choices across compute, storage, networking, and databases so your system scales cleanly, stays resilient under load, and supports real business outcomes.

In this course, learners work through real-world scenarios and hands-on exercises to build that architecture judgment, including:

• Scalable, high-performance patterns using services like S3, EBS, Auto Scaling, containers, and hybrid storage.
• High-performance database design with RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and ElastiCache—plus scaling, replication, migration, caching strategies, and global architectures.
• High-performance networking with VPC design, load balancing, edge services, secure data movement, and scalable ingestion patterns (including data lakes).
• Applying AWS Well-Architected best practices to optimize reliability, efficiency, and cost tradeoffs.

The course culminates in an architectural project with a meaningful real-world theme: designing and draw an architectural proof of concept to help feed hungry people around the world—starting with an architecture diagram and detailed rationale.

For me, this release is also a meaningful milestone as a learning strategist and technical trainer. I care deeply about “bringing high-tech down to Earth™”—translating complex AWS concepts into clear mental models and repeatable decision frameworks that learners can carry into the exam and into production.

If you’re preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate exam—or you want a structured path to strengthen your architecture skills—this Nanodegree is now open for enrollment.