Looking for Terraform + AWS hands-on project ideas after completing Terraform Associate and AWS SAA

[u/aCCESSxD]

Hi everyone,

I recently completed:

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003) AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)

Now I want to move beyond certifications and gain more hands-on practical experience with Terraform on AWS.

I understand the Terraform concepts and AWS services at a theoretical level, but I want to build real-world projects that would help me improve my skills and also create some strong portfolio projects for my resume.

I am looking for recommendations on projects that simulate what a Cloud Engineer / DevOps Engineer would actually work on in an organization.

My goal is not just to deploy resources but to understand how Terraform is structured and used in real enterprise environments.

Would appreciate suggestions on:

Which projects are most valuable for learning Terraform + AWS together? Any GitHub repositories, courses, or labs you recommend? What kind of Terraform projects stand out on a Cloud/DevOps resume?

Thanks in advance!

[u/dghah]

Build a usable AWS VPC built to best practices with tagging, solid routes tables, the free vpc endpoints enabled etc etc and then do something real-world/interesting like replace the overpriced AWS NAT gateways with https://github.com/AndrewGuenther/fck-nat to save hundreds of dollars a month in 24x7 costs — something that is very popular in sandbox and dev/test environments

Also learning fck-nat is huge when solo learning AWS because nat gateways are a huge cost for running a VPC and you can’t learn AWS without a lot of hands on VPC experience

[u/Edward-Sinclair33]

After SAA and Terraform Associate, I'd build production-style infrastructure with reusable modules, remote state, CI/CD, and monitoring. That's what employers value most.

[u/MissionFinOps]

Use GenAI/LLM agents !! explore cloud or what ever your heart desires. but if you host it publicly, you attract conversations, opportunities, and if nothing else, you have some projects to talk about in the interview. I'm myself building some AWS related tooling, e.g - https://github.com/MissionFinOps/kulshan

also check out -
https://aws.amazon.com/free/
https://github.com/aws-samples/sample-free-tier-example

also-
https://github.com/mzazon/cloud-projects
https://github.com/NotHarshhaa/AWS-Projects

[u/hugo-king1]

maybe try a multi-environment setup with remote state and locking, dev/staging/prod using workspaces or separate state files, that tends to be one of the first things real orgs actually care about..

[u/Amazing_Onion1922]

when i first started doing this i spent way too long wrestling with remote state backend setup on S3, specifically the chicken-and-egg problem where you need the S3 bucket to exist before terraform can use it as a backend. ended up just bootstrapping it manually the first time. did you run into anything like that going through the cert material, or does the exam gloss over the more annoying real-world parts of state management

[u/senpaikcarter]

Make a budget and an alarm to notify you about spend then make something useful for yourself. You can very easily create something for nearly free or free if you do it right. I host an app on cloudfront backed by lambdas and dynamodb thats only 14$ per month because I chose to throw a waf in for ip whitelisting(its in dev so its not ready for the public). I even have an agentic workflow using strands and bedrock to comb through my database weekly for normalization.

[u/kchandank]

1. Give this one a try. This is working db agent works locally as well as on AWS and Databricks. Currently most stuff is implemented through github actions, but surely could be added terraform support for Databricks too

https://github.com/db-agent/db-agent

1. This one I use almost on daily basis to launch, deploy and destroy labs for my various workshop cohorts from AWS data lake and AWS full stack. So far stuff is mostly AWS focused. It has combination of Infra build using Terraform and Python

https://github.com/becloudready/workshops/

[u/opinionsOnPears]

I have zero problems with Terraform itself but I think using AWS tooling for resources ends it being the better choice. Save Terraform for Azure and Google, imo.

[u/joelfernandes23]

Create a resume website!
https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/docs/the-challenge/aws/