Stephen Nimako Jr. was working in technical support in Tennessee, mostly with Azure and Active Directory, when he decided he wanted to move into cloud architecture. He was planning to relocate to Texas for better opportunities, and on paper he was already well prepared, with both the AWS Cloud Practitioner and Solutions Architect Professional certifications behind him.
He was also determined to make his learning visible, so that anyone looking at him could see what he could actually do.
Learning in public
He built projects on NextWork, documented each one and posted what he was learning publicly, so his portfolio grew with every project he finished. His projects went up on LinkedIn alongside his own documentation, which meant anyone curious about Stephen could look at the work for themselves.
He also threw himself into the community. He helped other learners troubleshoot, shared his own Notion project tracker, and ran 30-day challenges where learners completed projects together while they went after jobs.
It wasn't smooth - learning hands-on while switching careers rarely is. Stephen ran into unexpected AWS bills, confusing tools and setup problems, along with long projects, interview nerves and a lot of uncertainty about how to position himself. He turned those experiences into feedback for our team and kept building.
The final stage
Then came a role at Amazon Web Services. By the final stage, the hiring manager was choosing between Stephen and one other finalist. What happened next, in Stephen's words:
"When they brought my résumé to him, he didn't even look at my résumé first - he went straight to my LinkedIn. He picked me over the other guy because of what he saw on my LinkedIn... the projects that I had."
His certifications helped get him into that room. By the time he got there, he also had months of documented projects sitting on his LinkedIn, and that was the first thing the hiring manager went looking for.
Where he is now
Stephen got the role, and the move to Texas he'd been planning happened too. He now works for AWS in Austin.
Stephen, thank you for every 30-day challenge you ran for other learners. You can follow what he's building now on LinkedIn.
Going from support to cloud architecture through hands-on projects is a great example of building proof instead of waiting for a title. Disclosure, I built https://www.allthingspm.app/, which has free mock interviews from real job descriptions for people making a similar jump into product.