What a day of AWS Architect looks like? Roman Ceresnak will describe to you his day at Adastra. You might spend part of the day reviewing existing environments or planning new ones. But what is for sure is you spend some good time with your colleagues over lunch or/and on calls.
AWS architect position is my dream job, and I love it every single day in my career. For sure, every day is not like sunshine, and sometimes you must do some “dirty job” which you do not like, but I do what I love 95 percent of my work time. But what I actually do, or how my usual working day look like? Let’s find out.
My working day starts quite soon. I wake up every day at 6 AM. This is how the entrance to our building looks like during winter.
I have to use a mask because covid time is a severe problem, and in each indoor space, the cover is needed. Trust me, the doorman gave me such a vast “lecture” about covid and mask in the building. Her speech took 5 minutes of my life. By the way, thank you. I push the button, which calls the lift and press number 5, which rides me to our office’s fifth floor. Every person in Adastra has a card used for opening the door. I see the view every day, and I still love it.
At Adastra, we do not have a specific place where we have to work. It is an open space where anyone can choose their position. Some people work at the desk. Some people work in Tuli bag or from home. It is up to anyone when they decide to work. I work from a desk because I use an external monitor and need a space for my breakfast.
During my breakfast, I see at my calendar and try to find some free slot for my launch because when the colleagues come, we need to find a time when a significant part of us have a time for launch. Yeah, during eating, I think about eating. Ok, but let’s get back to the job. It is 7 AM, and I start working. I immediately begin to work on a task which I will explain later in this article. I had to investigate and create a dashboard for Fully Managed Grafana in AWS. We decided to swap from Grafana, which ran in Kubernetes, to Grafana, which AWS manages. Does it sound like a simple task? Not at all. I found several problems that came from my person’s not relevant permission because the customer has a strict restriction that only SAML authentication is allowed. Never mind. I am lucky that this information can be said during our daily meeting and impediment meeting, which will be later. During my investigation, I found out that I will need additional permission for Redshift and Athena.
Ok, it is 9 o’clock, and our daily stand up began. We work as a small group of 15 people where we have a scrum master, tech lead, and experts in specific fields. When I came to Adastra, I said I wanted to work in multiple areas, so I cooperate with various teams on various tasks. Sometimes it is a challenge, but everyone in the group is unbelievably friendly and happy to help you. During the call, everyone says what they did yesterday and if any person need help, immediately arrange a call with a specific person. Sometimes it is not directly because everyone is busy, but they help you for sure. It is 9:30, and I see “impediment call” on my calendar. During the next 30 minutes, we solve problems like privileges, serious troubles, and security issues from teams where I participate and new requests from the group. All guys from the team and a primarily additional guy from the group level are on the call. My and the team are like local instance, which falls under the group.
Finally, my afternoon calls were done, and I started to work on the diagram. I have to design a diagram for the current AWS architecture. Ok, I had to check around 50 pages in confluence, but step by step, I have created a diagram in Visio that I am satisfied with. I immediately ping the tech lead about the first draft of architecture, and he told me to schedule a call between us after lunch. My colleagues come to check me if I am available for lunch and a break, so let’s go. We are lucky because bars and restaurants are finally open to having the big burger.
After a lunch break, I am back in front of my computer, and I open IntelliJ and start work on my terraform script. Even if I do not finalize my task, I am sure that if some problem occurs, I can ask about this problem tech lead which I will have a call with. My call starts soon, so I prepare everything and go to the call room with more privacy. The most important are notes and pens. Sometimes when I know that the call will be short, I make a video in case I will have to go through the information again. In 30 minutes call, I show a diagram and discuss why I used some approaches, why I used specific services, etc. It is like a dialogue about architecture. AWS is a massive cloud, and someone cannot know everything. The most crucial part is that if even junior has a good idea, we are ready to support him with their approach. We discuss a diagram, and automatically I start working on changes after the call is done. My 8 hours working day is almost done, but when it is necessary, I stay in the office much longer. If a team member needs me, I am there for anyone. For the previous call, I decided to choose another meeting room named “Casiopea”.
It is almost my time to go home, but the most important part is checking my tomorrow duties. I know it is pretty strange, but I like seeing what I do tomorrow. I can think about it during the walk to my flat or sleeping.
So, it is more-less my typical day. Of course, it can change very quickly, but the core part is almost the same. If you did not read my article where I wrote which tools, I use as a cloud architect, it is here.
I hope you like the article, and maybe it shows you the responsibilities of AWS Architect. Have a nice day.