- Learn AWS
- MLA
AWS certification
AWS Machine Learning Engineer – Associate
The MLA exam is a design exam. Most questions are a short scenario with four architectures that would all technically work, and the one that is right is the one that meets the constraint the scenario put in the second sentence. So knowing what a service does is where preparation starts, not where it finishes.
Below are the 3 AWS services in this library the exam asks about, ranked by how heavily it leans on each. These weights are this library’s own reading, not AWS’s — AWS’s published exam guide is still the document to plan around. What they are good for is order: revise down the list rather than through the alphabet.
Comes up
- AWS EC2Virtual machines you choose, size and run yourself: the most flexible compute on AWS, and the most work.
- AWS S3Object storage for any amount of data: files kept as objects in buckets, designed for eleven nines of durability, and private until you grant access.
- AWS IAMWho can do what to which AWS resource, and under what conditions. Every request to AWS is checked against it.
Then learn the shapes
Exam scenarios are not built service by service. They are built out of a small number of architectures with the names changed, and recognising which one a scenario is describing narrows four plausible answers down to one. There are 16 of them, each with the phrases in a brief that point at it.
AWS architecture patterns →Questions
- Which AWS services does the Machine Learning Engineer – Associate exam cover?
- More than any one page can list, but the weight is not spread evenly — a handful of services carry most of the questions. This page ranks the 3 services in the library that the MLA exam asks about, heaviest first, so revision can follow the weight rather than the alphabet.
- Is reading about services enough to pass MLA?
- On its own, no. The exam asks you to choose between services under constraints, not to recite what each one does — most questions are a short scenario with four designs that would all technically work. That is why the service pages end in traps and an exam-style question, and why the practice scenarios ask you to produce an architecture rather than pick one.
- How should I revise for MLA?
- Learn the service, learn what it is mistaken for, learn the shape it belongs to, then design against a brief and have the design marked. Knowing that SQS decouples is not the same as recognising "must never reject an order" in a paragraph of business requirements and knowing what to draw.
- Are these weights official?
- No, and nothing here should be read as AWS's own exam guide — that is published by AWS and is the document to plan around. These weights are this library's reading of how heavily each exam leans on each service, used to put revision in a sensible order. Every fact on the service pages themselves is checked against AWS's own documentation, and each page lists the pages it was checked against.
Other AWS certifications
Practise the part the exam actually tests
Read a scenario, build the architecture on a canvas, and have it scored against what the scenario requires — with the reason behind every requirement, which is the part that transfers to a question you have not seen.
Browse the scenarios