The AWS Certified Solution Architect - Professional exam was the first of three exams I planned to take in a two week span. To be fully transparent, this one was a stretch goal for me this year. I talked myself out of thinking I was ready to take the plunge in 2024 and spent the year renewing my solution architect associate because it felt more comfortable. But 2025, shifted gears because being known as a cloud security SME wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to make sure it’s clear, if to no one but myself, that I am proficient in cloud engineering, architecture, development, AND security.
Content Review
The amount of information covered in this exam was about 3x what was covered in the Solution Architect Associate (SAA) exam. Because in this exam there’s literally more than one right answer available for you to choose from. It’s your job to read carefully and completely to decide which approach is the BEST one to achieve the expressed goal of the situation. The questions are a little longer with more context, some of which is there to distract you.
The themes I found occurring most in my questions were around cost optimization and operational excellence. So I strongly suggest a deep awareness of the different pillars of the well architected framework.
How I studied
I said this before, but SkillBuilder saw a lot of me in 2025. I used the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional Exam preparation learning path and touched pretty much all of the content. These paths are super long with lots of reading and Simulearn labs as well. These paths question banks for this exam is not quite as extensive as what was available for the SAA exam, but they definitely helped me get familiar with how to read the problem and think through the best options even if more than one is available. You’ll see a lot of phrases like “most cost-effectively” or “least operational overhead” at least 60% of the time and those questions generally have answer choices that look very similar to one another with minor differences.
In addition to SkillBuilder, Stephane Maarek’s course on Udemy for this exam was incredibly helpful in learning about the architectures and recommended patterns of implementation across pretty much the entire landscape of AWS. He has his course organized by cloud capability (I.e. computer, ML/AI, storage,etc) and that is how my brain best learned. There are other courses that take the exam domain approach, but I felt those helped me prepare for the exam and not really life, which is really the goal. Not to just hypothetically design sustainable systems, but to actually build them, support them, and improve them over time.
This exam was the one I poured most of my intentional study time to when my exam days got closer. Not because it’s more important, but because the end of year is also when I began planning for what’s to come for my team. This study directly impacted the way I framed the high priority objectives for the year. Let this be a recommendation from me, if there’s any exam for you to study for, I definitely say this is the one.
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