“EPITA engineers are welcome to apply for all AWS job offers!”
“EPITA engineers are welcome to apply for all AWS job offers!”
In the early summer of 2019, EPITA was not at all on vacation, far from it! Indeed, from July 8-19, the EPITA Parisian campus hosted a special seminar to train more than 400 EPITA students in cloud technologies, in partnership with Amazon Web Services. Matthieu Bienvenu, Education Programs Manager at AWS, spoke to us about this joint initiative between the school and the cloud computing giant.
Matthieu Bienvenu on the EPITA Parisian campus
Organizing an AWS training session with approximately 400 people is a real first!
Matthieu Bienvenu: This year, EPITA chose to organize a very special event, cloud month, which is based in particular on the AWS Academy Program. This program helps schools and teachers train their students in AWS cloud skills and prepare them for professionally recognized certifications. A program of this scale, training more than 400 students in cloud technologies is, in fact, being more extensively developed.
We have been working with EPITA for a long time and are delighted to see our collaboration grow year after year. For several years, EPITA has also been a member of the AWS Educate program, which provides students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors. In fact, we have already organized free day-long events with practical workshops to give students a general idea of what cloud computing consists of.
Why is it important for AWS to meet with future computer science engineers?
Matthieu Bienvenu: Today, cloud computing is used by millions of customers who wish to benefit from greater flexibility and capacity for innovation that do not exist when using their own data-centers. The arrival and development of cloud computing among our customers often requires seeking out new talents to strengthen the existing teams and give life to new projects made possible by cloud computing. Our customers and our partners ask us to help them train future talents in the field of cloud computing so that they may better understand the challenges and technologies that are essential for these organizations. This is what we are trying to do by developing programs like the AWS Academy and AWS Educate.
What are the skills expected of an engineer working in the cloud?
Matthieu Bienvenu: There are many different professions related to the use of cloud computing and it is therefore difficult for me to answer this question. I would say that the main quality required is curiosity, and the desire to learn and understand. First of all, because the technologies provide services required by businesses and a client’s request, and offering a solution means being able to understand the challenges and constraints, whether they are technical or not. Also, the cloud makes it easier for developers to access services which previously required a great deal of expertise and were therefore reserved for a limited number of users. Today, there are managed services in areas as diverse as mobile applications, robotics, the Internet of things, machine learning and blockchain, which allow a very large community of developers to benefit from these innovative technologies without being an expert in the field. There are often several possible solutions for one and the same need. The engineers using cloud computing will have to be curiosity-driven in order to delve into these different solutions and choose the one that best meets the specific needs.
What are the skills expected of an engineer working at AWS?
Matthieu Bienvenu: The AWS programs dedicated to the education sector such as the AWS Academy and AWS Educate are first and foremost given in a pedagogical framework that is not directly linked to a recruitment strategy. This being said, we have an ambitious recruitment plan and the engineers from EPITA are welcome to apply for all AWS job offers! We also have several former EPITA graduates who work in France with our Architect Solutions, Professional Services and support teams, as well as abroad with the AWS cloud platform development teams, for example.
How do the EPITA students rank, in your opinion?
Matthieu Bienvenu: After speaking with the school’s professors and students, I feel that EPITA graduates are extremely mature and able to rapidly understand new concepts and quickly implement them in practical and concrete cases. We also thoroughly enjoy the students’ levels of enthusiasm and their love of life, which seems to be promoted by the school. Finally, all customers and partners as well as the AWS clients with whom I have spoken seem to be highly satisfied by the technical and human skills that these students have when they graduate from EPITA. As the customer is king, the quality of this educational program is definitely up to par and I hope that we will have the opportunity to continue working with EPITA for a long time.
Would you like more information? Discover the interview with the winning AWS Gameday students!