AWS developers
Rates, hiring difficulty, a hiring guide and interview questions for an AWS developer: everything in one place.
Overview
AWS developers design, build, and manage cloud infrastructure and cloud-native applications on Amazon Web Services. They bridge the gap between application development and operations, working with services like Lambda, ECS, RDS, S3, and CloudFormation to build scalable, cost-effective architectures.
AWS is one of the hardest stacks to hire for right now. Demand far outstrips the number of developers who use it, so expect long searches and to pay at the top of the range.
Where to find more talent: Kubernetes developers (11% want to move into AWS), Docker developers (9% want to move into AWS), Terraform developers (9% want to move into AWS).
Retention: 50% of developers who use AWS want to keep using it, and 9% of those who do not use it yet want to start.
Open roles per 1,000 developers Full ranking →
US job postings (30 days) divided by developers who use each stack. Higher means harder to hire.
What an AWS developer costs
Contract and salary benchmarks for the US.
Contract rate
C2C or 1099, from W-2 hourly × 1.3–1.6 for tax, benefits and overhead.
W-2 equivalent
BLS median for US software developers ($135,980), adjusted +10% for AWS using Stack Overflow 2025 pay data (1,786 respondents).
Full-time contractor cost
Per year at 40 hours a week.
Agencies typically bill 2–3× W-2 pay. See what a full project costs, compare W-2, 1099 and C2C, or check rates by state.
How to hire an AWS developer
What good looks like, and what should worry you.
Typical projects
- Cloud migration from on-premise to AWS
- Serverless application architecture with Lambda and API Gateway
- Infrastructure as Code with CloudFormation or CDK
- Cost optimization and architecture review
- CI/CD pipeline setup with CodePipeline, CodeBuild, or GitHub Actions
Team setup
AWS developers work best when embedded with application teams rather than siloed in an infrastructure team. For a cloud migration, you'll want a senior AWS architect to design the target state and 1-2 AWS developers to implement. For ongoing work, one strong AWS developer can support 3-4 application teams if they're building reusable modules (CDK constructs, Terraform modules). Pair with security for compliance-heavy environments.
What to look for
- Hands-on experience with core services (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, IAM) — not just certification knowledge
- Understanding of networking: VPCs, subnets, security groups, NAT gateways
- Can discuss cost tradeoffs between architectural choices (Lambda vs ECS vs EKS)
- Infrastructure as Code experience — CDK or Terraform, not clicking through the console
- Security-first mindset: IAM policies, encryption at rest/transit, least-privilege access
Red flags
- Certification-heavy but can't describe a real architecture they've built
- Uses root credentials or overly permissive IAM policies
- No understanding of networking fundamentals — can't explain how a request flows through a VPC
- Treats AWS as the only cloud — can't discuss tradeoffs or when GCP/Azure might be better
- Can't estimate costs for an architecture before building it
Interview questions
Questions that separate strong candidates from people who just list the keyword.
- Design a highly available web application on AWS. Walk me through every service you'd use and why.
- How would you set up a zero-downtime deployment pipeline for a containerized application?
- A Lambda function that used to cost $50/month is now costing $2,000. How do you diagnose and fix this?
- Explain how you'd implement cross-account access for a multi-account AWS organization.
- What's your approach to disaster recovery? Compare RTO/RPO tradeoffs across different strategies.
Hiring trend
How often AWS appears in startup hiring posts over time.
Hacker News “Who’s Hiring” posts mentioning AWS, by year (2015–Feb 2025). Peak: 2017 with 1,179 posts. HN hiring overall has fallen since 2019, so compare stacks rather than reading absolute numbers. Its share of current US job postings changed -6% since April 2026.
Similar stacks
Related skills, with their rates and hiring difficulty.
Need AWS developers?
We take on contract AWS work, from one developer joining your team to building the whole product. Tell us what you need and we'll reply by email.
- MVPs and new products
- Developers for your existing team
- Rescuing stalled projects
- AI features
Questions
How much does an AWS developer cost?
Contract AWS developers typically bill $93–115/hr (C2C or 1099). The W-2 equivalent salary is about $149,200. Agencies usually charge 2–3× W-2 pay.
Is it hard to hire AWS developers?
AWS is rated Severe on our hiring difficulty index (90/100, #3 of 29), with about 61 open US roles for every 1,000 developers who use it.
Should I hire a full-time AWS developer or use a contractor?
If the work is ongoing and core to your product, hire. If you need to start quickly, cover a gap, or the role is hard to fill, a contractor or agency gets work moving while you search.