I Just Passed Cloud Practitioner – What’s the Best Project I Should Build?

Don’t Let the Cert Gather Dust

Passing the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is a milestone. It proves you understand the cloud value proposition, billing, security, and the core service categories. But knowing *about* the cloud isn’t the same as building *on* it.

A certification without a project is like a driver’s theory test without ever sitting behind the wheel. The best way to make the credential stick – and to give yourself something concrete to talk about in interviews – is to build a complete, live application that touches the services you just learned about.

The Cloud Resume Challenge: The Proven Path

If you search “best project after Cloud Practitioner” in any community, one answer dominates: **the Cloud Resume Challenge**.

Created by Forrest Brazeal, the challenge has been completed by thousands of newcomers. It’s designed specifically for those who’ve just passed the foundational exam. [The official site](https://cloudresumechallenge.dev) spells out every step, but I’ll walk you through why it works so well.

What You’ll Build

A personal resume website served entirely on AWS. That sounds simple, but under the hood you’ll integrate:

**S3** for static website hosting

**CloudFront** for HTTPS and global CDN

**AWS Certificate Manager** for a custom domain

**DynamoDB** to store a visitor counter

**Lambda** (Python or JavaScript) to increment the counter

**API Gateway** to expose the counter endpoint

**Infrastructure as Code** (SAM or Terraform) to define all resources

**GitHub Actions** for CI/CD that deploys your backend and frontend on every push

You end up with a live URL that shows your resume and a visitor count – a tiny but complete serverless application. It’s the full-stack, real-world loop that a multiple-choice exam never touches.

Step-by-Step Overview

1. **Resume as static HTML/CSS** – write a clean resume, version it in Git.

2. **S3 + CloudFront** – host it with encryption and low latency.

3. **DynamoDB table** – store a single integer.

4. **Lambda function** – increment the visitor count, return the new value.

5. **API Gateway** – expose a REST endpoint that triggers the Lambda.

6. **JavaScript snippet** – add a fetch call to your website to display the count.

7. **Infrastructure as Code** – use AWS SAM or Terraform to define everything.

8. **CI/CD** – set up GitHub Actions so that every commit runs tests and deploys.

9. **Monitoring** – add observability so you know when something breaks.

Why This Project Works

It forces you to touch the precise services the exam introduced, but in a practical way. You’ll learn why IAM roles matter (your Lambda needs permission to write to DynamoDB), how billing boundaries appear (Lambda free tier vs. API Gateway costs), and what region selection actually means for latency. These are the nuances that turn textbook knowledge into engineering instinct.

Moreover, it’s a portfolio piece that tells a story: “I certified, then I built.” Hiring managers for junior cloud roles consistently cite the Cloud Resume Challenge as a differentiator.

Add Observability with Sapior

Once your site is live, the next question is: **how do you know it’s still healthy?**

Production systems fail silently all the time – a misconfigured IAM policy, a cold start that times out, a spike in API Gateway errors. Without monitoring, you’re blind.

That’s where Sapior fits. Sapior is a developer-first observability and error-tracking platform built for serverless workloads. It gives you:

**Real-time error grouping** from Lambda and API Gateway

**Latency dashboards** so you can spot cold starts or slow responses

**Alerts** on spikes in 5xx errors or cost anomalies

**Deployment markers** that overlay your CI/CD events on performance graphs

After you deploy the Cloud Resume Challenge, connect Sapior in minutes. You’ll see every invocation, every error, and every performance shift right in a single dashboard. It turns a static project into a living, monitored system – and that’s what shows you’re ready for real work.

Going Further

Once the resume site is solid, you can extend it:

**Custom domain with Route 53**

**Authentication** via Amazon Cognito to allow private resume edits

**Cost budget alerts** in AWS Budgets

**End-to-end tests** that validate the visitor count increment

Each layer reinforces the Security, Reliability, and Cost Optimization pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework – exactly the mindset the Practitioner exam starts to cultivate.

The Bottom Line

Certifications open doors, but projects open careers. The Cloud Resume Challenge is the fastest, most recognised route from “I passed” to “I can prove it.” Add observability with Sapior, and you’ll have a system you can trust – and a story that interviews itself.