Interviews can be a nerve-racking experience for every tech professional, no matter if you’re a career freshman or veteran.
But with the Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition finding that only half (52%) of permanent AWS professionals expect to be working for their current employer in the coming year, with a quarter (23%) already actively looking for a new opportunity, knowing how to interview for AWS roles successfully is crucial for today’s talent.
If you know what employers are looking for when hiring AWS talent, you have the insider information you need to ensure you’re ticking all the right boxes in your next interview—and the good news is, you’re in the right place.
After surveying hiring managers to discover the main things they look for in an AWS candidate during a job interview, we’re showing you how to impress in front of future employers, using our own experience and expertise as leading AWS recruitment specialists to offer up some top tips and tricks, and example interview questions and answers. Oh, and that’s not forgetting invaluable industry insights that help you get ahead by better understanding exactly what employers are looking for when hiring AWS talent.
So whether you’ve already secured your next interview (nice work!) or you’re looking to get ahead when re-entering the job market, this AWS interview guide is for you.
Do your research
Not doing your research on the employer you’re interviewing with is a surefire way to fall at the first hurdle—which is why, according to a poll conducted on our LinkedIn page, hiring managers consider a lack of preparation to be the biggest red flag in an interview (42%).
Interviewers can tell from a mile away if you’ve done your prep by taking the time to learn more about their organization, and they consider this a solid indication of whether or not you’re actually passionate about joining them.
Fail to do basic research on your prospective employer, and you can even be caught out by simple questions like:
- What do you know about us?
- Why do you want to join our team?
- What made you apply for this position?
And unsurprisingly, this is never a good look.
On the flip side, the more research you do, the more you can demonstrate why you’re the right person for the role and impress the one-fifth (21%) of hiring managers who actively look for proof of preparation during an interview.
Showcase your skills
A significant 46% of hiring managers told us they’re on the lookout for candidates who can demonstrate their skills during the interview process.
But what skills should you showcase, and what’s the most effective way to do this?
Every organization is at a different stage of its tech journey, but the reality is that most are still developing their long-term cloud strategies. Organizations know what they want from their digital infrastructure, but don’t necessarily know how to get there—our Careers and Hiring Guide found that half (51%) of businesses surveyed faced challenges with their implementation because they lacked the appropriate skills internally, with 61% of those who experienced a go-live delay attributing this to the same reason.
Likewise, we found that a lack of in-house skills (19%) and struggling to identify the skills needed (8%) ranked among the top tech staffing challenges employers expect to face in the next year. And so, if you are proactive in researching the relevant industry and bringing ideas, examples, and solutions to the table from the get-go, this exhibits an impressive degree of knowledge, enthusiasm, and authenticity that will get you far.
In our Careers and Hiring Guide, AWS professionals told us that these are the top five product types they have experience with:
- Compute (61%)
- Database (57%)
- Storage (56%)
- Serverless (50%)
- Containers (47%)
So, if you possess these skill sets, be sure to make this clear in your interview to stay competitive against other candidates. But don’t just say you have these skills; prove it. Highlight real-world instances of when and where you’ve utilized them, anchoring back to examples on your resume to present tangible evidence and a portfolio of your expertise.
It’s important to showcase all your strengths, as this will present you as an agile and adaptable team member. However, employers value experience and expertise above all else, so try to emphasize your speciality the most. After all, this is the most effective way of ensuring you stand out from the crowd.
It’ll come as little surprise to learn that AI dominates much of the conversation around cloud trends in 2025, along with other fast-evolving areas like quantum computing breaking into the mainstream. Expertise is still relatively hard to come by in these emerging areas of tech—in fact, just 4% of candidates we surveyed reported experience in quantum technologies—meaning that if you’re already experienced and knowledgeable around this, then your interviewer will definitely want to hear all about it.
Demonstrate your willingness to learn
Above all, hiring managers in our Careers and Hiring Guide told us that they want candidates to exhibit a willingness to learn (47%) during an interview.
Organizations are still facing the impacts of a digital skill gap that 7 in 10 recognize as an issue within the AWS ecosystem, with a further 43% stating that the problem has increased in the last 12 months.
Without the knowledge and capabilities in-house to execute tech projects successfully, many businesses are experiencing project delays and missed opportunities. So, with the supply of specialized tech professionals still not adequately meeting demand, many employers are instead looking internally to bridge these gaps. For example, when asking organizations how they plan to address the skills gap in the next 12 months, building skills in-house came out on top (52%), indicating a clear shift towards upskilling teams and accelerating learning and development.
Therefore, showcasing your willingness to learn can be the secret weapon in your arsenal when your skillset might not tick all the boxes, or when employers have ambitious plans on the horizon. Your passion for your development not only signals that you’re a valuable asset to the team, but also that you align with the company’s values and direction.
If you hold a certification, steering the conversation towards this is one way to touch upon your self-development. Not only does this demonstrate a verifiable level of knowledge and skill, but certifications also show a level of commitment, credibility, and passion for AWS and your own learning—it’s why 82% of those with certifications believe that they make you more marketable.
Prep for common questions
The questions you’re asked throughout the interview might be a little tough at times. While the interview may start lightly, you should be ready to answer some complex and technical questions as it progresses.
The trick is to stay calm, collected, and honest. If you don’t know the answer, don’t bury your head in the sand or dig yourself a hole by making it up as you go along. AWS is an extensively complex ecosystem, and though your knowledge may be lacking in one area, you may excel compared to others in another.
While preparing for the more technical questions will depend on the context of your role, preparing for some of the more common interview questions can help relieve some of the nerves by arming you with some solid and thought-out answers ready to go. Don’t just recite pre-prepped answers word for word, though—use them as a foundation and personalize with your own knowledge, research, and context.
5 common interview questions for AWS roles (and how to answer them)
How would you describe AWS to someone with no prior knowledge of it?
While this might seem like a simple question for a tech pro, here, the interviewer is actually testing your ability to communicate complex ideas in clear and comprehensible ways.
This is an invaluable skill within modern workforces, the majority of which still lack a widespread understanding of basic cloud concepts and capabilities. And so, by asking for this definition in layman’s terms, the interviewer can gauge not just how much you understand the technologies involved, but also how well you can explain this to your peers.
The question has less to do with your technical expertise, and is more focused on how much of a valuable asset you could be to the team—tech professionals with good communication skills can help inform decision-making, guide internal cloud adoption, and increase buy-in from stakeholders and senior teams.
Can you describe a mistake you made when working with AWS and how you tried to solve it?
You’ve likely encountered some variation of this question before—it’s a classic go-to for many interviewers across many industries.
Questions like this that focus more on your weaknesses than your strengths are often dreaded by candidates, and for good reason: they’re hard to answer. But it’s important to understand that interviewers aren’t looking for you to put yourself down here—instead, they’re more interested in your approach to self-improvement and the level of accountability you’re willing to take for your mistakes.
Your ability to take personal responsibility is a good indication of whether you’re an effective team member—nobody is expected to be perfect, after all. So, ensure you’re being honest in acknowledging how and when you’ve gone wrong, and try to demonstrate practical problem-solving skills when explaining how you approached making amends.
What does the AWS landscape look like right now, and where do you see it going?
This one’s intended to evaluate your wider knowledge of the cloud landscape, and in particular, whether you’re keeping an ear to the ground and an eye on new developments.
In such fast-paced and highly-evolving ecosystems like AWS, employers want talent that is eager to expand their knowledge, quick to adapt to change, and jump right in and get hands-on with new developments and solutions.
And so, your answer should reflect this. Don’t just recite a dull stat about AWS’ latest market share—talk about recent announcements you felt were notable or exciting, and root predictions for the future of AWS in the context of your current expertise and experiences.
Tell me about the latest features of X.
It’s likely you’ll be quizzed on a specific product that you’ll be using in your role, so be sure to revise all the latest features, updates, and capabilities of the ones relevant to you.
You’ll likely already use these products regularly day-to-day, so may think that this is a breeze of a question. But it’s always worth recapping and doing a little extra homework—you don’t want brain freeze in a job interview, and this can even happen with information you’d think was on the tip of your tongue.
So take some time the night before your interview to jot down some of the most recent features of the relevant products, making note of their functionality too, so they’re fresh in your mind the next day.
Explain the projects in your AWS portfolio
The best answers to this question don’t just rattle through a list of your past work and achievements—the interviewer wants to see how deeply you can explain the intricacies of each project to assess your level of knowledge and application.
This is a good time to highlight some of those in-demand skills we’ve already discussed!
If you’ve got a large portfolio, strive to highlight a good mix of projects to demonstrate your adaptability. We also recommend including an example of a time things didn’t go totally to plan—being able to prove how you utilize your skills and expertise to overcome real-world problems will demonstrate your value to the team.
The key thing to remember is that the interviewer is looking for detail. For example, don’t just tell them that you implemented security best practices; tell them about the specific steps you took to do it. It’s likely that the interviewer will be evaluating your answers against their internal ways of doing things—for example, how your use of a framework or tool compares to their existing options—again presenting a great opportunity to demonstrate your immediate value to their team.
Psst, for even more insider info, check out this blog post—AWS experts shared with us their top interview questions (and how to answer them) to help businesses size up their next hire… but to help you get ahead, we thought we’d share them with you too!
Ask questions of your own
At the end of the interview, it’s likely you’ll be asked whether you have any questions of your own.
Coming prepared with some questions to ask at this point is Interview Prep 101, but it’s important not to overlook the importance of this stage. This is your opportunity to confirm whether the employer is the right fit for you—interviews are a two-way street after all!
So make sure you’re asking questions that you actually care about the answer to. When we asked AWS professionals in our Careers and Hiring Guide what motivates them to consider leaving an employer, they cited reasons including:
- A lack of career and promotional prospects (41%)
- The desire to work remotely (25%)
- A lack of leadership and vision (23%)
- To pursue more interesting/valuable work (21%)
These are all areas you can ask about at this stage of the interview, and although they can be awkward to talk about, it’s crucial you ask about what matters most to you— after all, the wrong hire benefits neither you nor the employer.
And by asking these questions, you demonstrate a level of passion and care for your job and your workplace—something sure to be admired by any interviewer. Remember that good hiring managers aren’t looking for someone that fits into a company culture, but a candidate that can add to it.
Don’t be afraid to be direct, asking questions on:
- Company culture
- Company leadership and direction
- Remote work policy
- Employee job satisfaction
- Training and development support
- ED&I initiatives and support
- Employee perks and benefits
- Salaries
