~/ CASE STUDY · CLOUD RESUME CHALLENGE
Cloud
Résumé
A fully serverless résumé on AWS with a live visitor counter — and the project that helped me land my role at AWS.
~/ Overview
What I built
The Cloud Resume Challenge is a hands-on project that proves cloud skills by building a serverless résumé website with a real-time visitor counter — showcasing Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines and AWS best practices end to end.
Mission accomplished
This project didn't just demonstrate my cloud skills — it helped me land my current role as a Solutions Architect at AWS. Proof that hands-on, practical projects move careers.
~/ Architecture
How it fits together
A fully serverless solution on AWS with modern DevOps practices.
Frontend
- â–¸ Static site hosted on S3
- â–¸ CloudFront CDN for global delivery
- â–¸ Custom domain via Route 53
- â–¸ SSL/TLS certificate via ACM
Backend
- â–¸ AWS Lambda for serverless compute
- â–¸ DynamoDB for the visitor counter
- â–¸ API Gateway REST endpoints
- â–¸ CloudWatch for monitoring
DevOps
- â–¸ Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation)
- â–¸ CI/CD pipeline with CodePipeline
- â–¸ GitHub for source control
- â–¸ Automated testing & deployment
~/ Stack
Technical stack
AWS services
Tools & tech
~/ Highlights
Key features & achievements
Serverless architecture
No servers to manage, automatic scaling and a pay-per-use pricing model.
Real-time visitor counter
A live counter that updates on every visit, backed by DynamoDB and Lambda.
Infrastructure as Code
The whole stack defined in CloudFormation for reproducible deployments.
CI/CD pipeline
Automated deploys triggered on every code change, with testing and validation.
Global CDN
CloudFront edge caching and SSL termination for fast loads worldwide.
Custom domain & SSL
A professional domain with automatic certificate management via ACM.
~/ Live dashboard
The site measures itself
The live metrics page is a small serverless pipeline that reads this website's own traffic straight from AWS: CloudFront logs every edge request, CloudWatch aggregates it, a Lambda formats it, and the page fetches it live and refreshes hourly.
What it measures
- â–¸Edge requests over the last hour and last 24h
- â–¸An estimate of real, successful (2xx) responses
- â–¸Data transferred out of CloudFront
- â–¸4xx from bots/scanners, shown separately
- ▸5xx server errors — which drive the health status
Note: these are raw CloudFront edge requests, not unique visitors — one page view pulls many asset requests, and a big share of the total is automated bot/scanner traffic (the 4xx column).
View the live dashboard~/ Takeaways
Lessons learned
Technical skills
- â–¸Serverless architecture patterns
- â–¸Infrastructure as Code best practices
- â–¸CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
- â–¸AWS service integration and optimization
- â–¸Monitoring and observability setup
Professional growth
- â–¸Project documentation and presentation
- â–¸Technical writing and blogging
- â–¸Problem-solving and debugging
- â–¸Cost optimization strategies
- â–¸Security best practices
~/ Next phase
PlannedA Kubernetes version on EKS
Rebuilding the project with Kubernetes on Amazon EKS and a microservices architecture — to show container orchestration and modern cloud-native practices.
Planned technologies
- â–¸Amazon EKS (Kubernetes)
- â–¸Docker containers
- â–¸Helm charts for deployment
- â–¸Istio service mesh
- â–¸Prometheus & Grafana
Architecture goals
- â–¸Microservices decomposition
- â–¸Auto-scaling and load balancing
- â–¸Blue-green deployments
- â–¸Advanced monitoring and logging
- â–¸GitOps workflow with ArgoCD
Start your own challenge
The Cloud Resume Challenge is an excellent way to prove your cloud skills and move your career forward. Check out the live metrics from this project, or explore my other work.