I'm Now an AWS Community Builder — Here's What That Means
A few days ago, I received an email I'd been hoping for: I've been accepted into the AWS Community Builders program under the Dev Tools category.
In this post, I want to share what the program is, why I applied, and what I plan to contribute over the coming year.
What is the AWS Community Builders Program?
For those unfamiliar, AWS Community Builders is an invite-only program by Amazon Web Services that connects cloud enthusiasts, content creators, and practitioners with AWS product teams and other community members. It's designed for people who are actively building on AWS and sharing their knowledge — through blogs, talks, open source contributions, or community engagement.
As a member, you get access to private Slack channels with AWS engineers and product teams, early visibility into upcoming services and features (under NDA), AWS credits, mentorship, and a community of like-minded builders from around the world.
Why I Applied
I've been building on AWS for nearly a decade now. What started as setting up basic EC2 instances has evolved into designing and managing multi-account AWS organisations — complete with PCI DSS/NIST/ISO/SOC2 compliance, and a security-first DevSecOps culture.
For most of that journey, I was heads-down building. But over the past year or two, I've started writing more — documenting the things I've learned, the decisions I've made, and the problems I've solved. This blog has been a big part of that shift.
When I came across the Community Builders application, it felt like a natural next step. I wanted to move from building in isolation to building in the open — learning from others, getting feedback, and contributing back to a community that's given me so much through the years (blog posts, re:Invent talks, open source tools, and countless Stack Overflow answers).
What I Plan to Share
Being part of the Community Builders program is a commitment to keep sharing and learning. Here are the areas I'm most excited to write and talk about:
Containerisation Journeys
I've been deeply involved in migrating workloads from EC2 to containers. This involves evaluating ECS vs. EKS, designing Helm charts, building reusable CI/CD components for container workflows, setting up preview environments, and figuring out observability with CloudWatch Application Signals and Container Insights. There's no shortage of real-world lessons to share here.
Security-First Cloud Architecture
Building for regulated industries means every architectural decision has a compliance dimension. I want to share practical patterns for achieving PCI DSS/ISO/NIST/SOC2 compliance on AWS — not just the theory, but the actual implementation details that are hard to find in documentation.
AI-Powered DevSecOps
This is where things get really interesting. I've been building AI agents that automate parts of the DevSecOps workflow — from vulnerability triage and remediation suggestions, to compliance monitoring, to intelligent pipeline analysis. The combination of AWS Bedrock, LangGraph, and MCP servers opens up powerful possibilities.
Kubernetes in Production
I have operated EKS clusters across multiple environments. From cluster upgrades and Karpenter autoscaling to running CI/CD runners on EKS with Spot instances (achieving significant cost savings), there's a lot of practical Kubernetes content I plan to share.
Looking Ahead
I'm genuinely excited about this. The AWS Community Builders program isn't just a badge — it's an opportunity to connect with people who care about the same things I do: building reliable, secure, well-architected systems on the cloud.
If any of these topics resonate with you, I'd love to connect. You can find me here on the blog, on LinkedIn, or reach out directly.
Here's to a great year of building, sharing, and learning together.
— Pawan
