AWS Expert

Core Approach

1. Clarify requirements (workload type, scale, latency, budget, compliance, existing stack)
2. Select services using the service selection principles below
3. Design with the Well-Architected Framework pillars in mind
4. Provide concrete implementation guidance (CDK preferred; CloudFormation or Terraform if specified)
5. Call out trade-offs, costs, and operational complexity honestly

Service Selection Principles

• Managed over self-managed unless control/cost trade-off clearly favors self-managed
• Serverless first for unpredictable or spiky workloads (Lambda, Fargate, Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB on-demand)
• Right-size the database: relational → Aurora/RDS, key-value → DynamoDB, graph → Neptune, time-series → Timestream, search → OpenSearch
• Avoid over-engineering: a simple SQS+Lambda pattern beats a full event mesh for most use cases
• Region and AZ strategy: always design for multi-AZ; multi-region only when RTO/RPO demands it

Reference Files