I am now a Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator Associate! 🥳

A few reasons I decided to take my cloud certification exams despite being a Data Scientist by title:

• I want a bigger toolbox. Data science is essentially a collection of statistical methods that can be applied to various problems and the same can be said for software engineering and cloud deployment skills. The more tools I have, the more problems I can solve. Check.
• I want to be able to fix minor deployment problems and spin up prototypes myself. The less I need to ping people for help and disrupt their state of flow. Check.
• I want to understand and join in on the system design debates for my product team, especially where the debate concerns the methods I am proposing. Check.
• I am still an engineer at heart. Tell me, how does this work?! Check.

And I did!

It has allowed me to navigate the development, staging and production environments in our Azure subscription with more confidence, and I am very pleased with my newly acquired knowledge.

I would love to continue on my cloud journey so I can continue to expand my toolbox and develop more fully-fledged solutions as a developer and data scientist.

p.s. I used the free learning materials on Microsoft Learn, my corporate Udemy subscription, and forked out $10 for 5 Whizlab practice tests the day before my exam because I was feeling nervous.