# Certification Roadmap

**Career goal:** Cloud Engineering
**Current level:** CompTIA A+ Core 1 passed (highest score in class of 22)

## Path

| # | Cert | Status | Target | Notes |
|---|------|--------|--------|-------|
| 1 | CompTIA A+ Core 1 | ✅ PASSED | — | Highest score in class of 22 |
| 2 | CompTIA A+ Core 2 | 🔄 Studying | July 7, 2026 (goal) / July 12 (hard deadline) | Diagnostic: 50% Sybex cold |
| 3 | CCNA | 📅 Next | ~2026 Q4 | Gold standard networking cert |
| 4 | AWS SAA-C03 | 📅 Planned | After CCNA | Core cloud cert, most in-demand |
| 5 | AWS SysOps Associate | 📅 Planned | After SAA | Operations focus, maps to homelab |
| 6 | CKA (Kubernetes) | 📅 Planned | After AWS | Container orchestration at scale |
| 7 | AI / Prompt Engineering | 📅 Planned | After cloud foundation | AWS AI Practitioner, DeepLearning.AI |

## Why This Order

- Networking (CCNA) before cloud makes AWS 3x easier to understand
- Associate certs before specialties — breadth before depth
- Homelab project (KiteStacks) already demonstrates cloud engineering skills at associate level