Three Free Tech Bootcamps That Could Change Your Career
How to become a Solutions Architect, Mastering the Foundations of Cybersecurity and the Absolute Basics in Data Engineering
This month, I’m excited to present three fantastic opportunities to learn from top-tier practitioners without spending a dime.
Whether you’re trying to break into tech or looking to make a strategic pivot in your career, these free bootcamps are packed with real-world lessons, hands-on skills, and instruction from people who’ve been in the trenches.
We are featuring these three free programs:
The BeSA (Become a Solutions Architect), a 6-week program to run on TechCreator Academy and led by AWS experts, ideal for professionals transitioning into Cloud, Generative AI and Solutions Architecture roles.
The Coding Boot Camp for Cybersecurity Professionals (also within TechCreator Academy), a 5-week journey into Python and automation tailored for cybersecurity specialists & enthusiasts eager to build their own tools.
The Absolute Beginner Data Engineering Bootcamp (already underway), a practical, 4-week program crafted for those new to the field, focused on building strong foundations in modern data engineering workflows.
Learn more about each of these free learning opportunities below!
Become a Solutions Architect (BeSA)
The Program
BeSA is a FREE mentoring program designed to help people excel in their cloud career and become Solutions Architects by upleveling them on both technical and behavioral skills.
Schedule & Curricula
The program starts on Sep 6th and runs for 6 consecutive weeks.
Lectures are live every Saturday at 2pm GMT (6am PT) and will last ~90 minutes (we will record all sessions for later replay in case you cannot attend live).
BeSA encompasses two tracks:
A Technical Track (T), focused on Migration and Modernization on AWS.
A Behavioral Track (B), covering Essential Skills for Next Generation Solution Architects.
This is the full curricula:
Week 1 (Sep 6th)
T: Migration Patterns and Migration Pathways on AWS
B: Become a Solutions Architect Keynote
Week 2 (Sep 13th)
T: AWS Migration Tool and AWS MGN Deep Dive
B: Transitioning from Traditional IT Roles to Cloud Solutions Architect
Week 3 (Sep 20th)
T: VMware Migration Pathways and AWS Transform for VMware
B: Learn how to run a successful ‘Workload discovery meeting’
Week 4 (Sep 27th)
T: Storage and Data Migration on AWS
B: Target Architectures, POCs, and How to earn ‘Trusted Advisor Status’
Week 5 (Oct 4th)
T: Modernization Patterns and Pathways on AWS
B: Communication Across Organizations and Managing Stakeholders
Week 6 (Oct 11th)
T: AWS Modernization Services and Tools
B: Influence, Negotiation & Conflict Resolution for Solutions Architects
Program Founders
Prasad Rao
Prasad is a Principal Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, leading large migration and modernization initiatives for partners and building trusted C-suite relationships to deliver business outcomes. He co-founded the BeSA mentoring program and regularly coaches newcomers on AWS certifications and interview prep. His enterprise transformation work maps directly to the program’s technical track focus on migration tools, VMware pathways, storage/data moves, and modernization patterns.
He is also an AWS community award recipient and co-author of Cloud Career Journeys, underscoring both technical depth and career guidance credibility.
Ashish Prajapati
Ashish is a Senior Customer Solutions Manager at AWS leading large-scale migration and modernization programs for global partners, engaging executives and engineering teams to turn business goals into delivered outcomes. Previously, he spent six years as a Senior Technical Instructor at AWS, building hands-on labs, curricula and a train-the-trainer program.
An AWS Authorized Instructor Mentor, top-rated Udemy instructor and published trainer, he bridges deep delivery experience with clear teaching.
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If you want to know BeSA in further detail, I encourage you to read the latest Big Tech Careers newsletter and also watch the BeSA You Tube Playlists.
I strongly recommend you join today. There’s no free Solutions Architect training like this program.
Coding Boot Camp for Cybersecurity Professionals
The Program
Staying ahead in cybersecurity takes more than solid principles. It takes the ability to code. This FREE program is designed to make Python and core data structures directly relevant to the day-to-day of any cybersecurity specialist or enthusiast.
You will move from using tools to building them through real-world exercises and a team capstone. You’ll leave with a deeper grasp of the systems you protect and the automation skills to make your work faster and more impactful.
The program will give you the foundations to:
Automate repetitive tasks like log analysis or vulnerability scanning.
Write custom scripts for penetration testing.
Develop your own security tools to solve unique problems.
Schedule & Curricula
The program starts on Sep 12th and runs for 5 consecutive weeks.
Lectures are live every Friday at 5pm PT and will last ~90 minutes (we will record all sessions for later replay in case you cannot attend live).
This is the full curricula:
Week 1 (Sep 12th)
Basics of Python, Time and Space Complexity
Week 2 (Sep 19th)
Common Algorithms (Sorting, Searching, Hashing)
Week 3 (Sep 26th)
1D Data Structures (Linked Lists, Stacks & Queues)
Week 4 (Oct 3rd)
Trees and Graphs
Week 5 (Oct 10th)
Capstone Demos
Your Instructors
Karan Dwivedi
Karan is a Security Engineering Manager at Google, leading detection and response for products like Search and Assistant. He previously helped Yahoo’s security team handle the world’s largest data breach. Karan builds threat-detection tooling, mentors engineers and automates investigations with Python.
He founded The Cyber Instructor, taught in the Google Cybersecurity Certificate (250k+ learners), authored Kickstart Your Security Engineering Career, the Cyber Instructor Newsletter and contributed to the CVSS 4.0 standard, combining practitioner depth with proven teaching skill and portfolio guidance.
Apurv Singh Gautam
Apurv is a Senior Threat Research Analyst at Cyble, building automated security tooling with Python: crawlers, scrapers and data pipelines that turn dark-web signals into actionable intelligence (including Elasticsearch/Kibana dashboards and scripted workflows). He has contributed to the SANS FOR589 Cybercrime Intelligence course, spoken at events like the SANS OSINT Summit and DEFCON Blue Team Village.
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I’ve known Karan for many years and I can guarantee his vast knowledge and teaching skills makes this program the perfect way to step into the foundations of cybersecurity.
The Absolute Beginner Data Engineering
The Program
I designed this program for you, the absolute beginner with no SQL, Python or any prior exposure to fundamentals of Data Engineering.
This boot camp will take you from zero to data engineering hero in 4 weeks. So, if you want to gain confidence and strong foundations into Data Engineering, take this challenge and let’s crush it together!
Schedule & Curricula
The program started on Aug 17th and will run for another 3 weeks.
I’ll be announcing the exact time the lectures go live. Please stay tuned for this!
This is the full curricula:
Week 1 (Aug 18th)
SQL Basics: GROUP BY, JOINs & Common Table Expressions
Week 2 (Sep 1st)
Python Essentials
Building Data Pipelines in Python
Week 3 (Sep 8th)
Data Pipelines Basics
Building Data Pipelines in Apache Airflow
Week 4 (Sep 15th)
Dimensional Data Modeling
Fact Data Modeling
Your Instructor
Zach Wilson
I’m Zach, the founder of DataExpert.io and Techcreator.io.
I have taught over 80k students through my hands-on data engineering boot camps. I also write the DataExpert Newsletter, read by 160k+ subscribers, and post video content on my “Data with Zach” YouTube channel (238k subscribers).
Previously, I served as a senior/staff data engineer at Airbnb, Netflix, and Facebook, leading large-scale pipelines and infrastructure for availability, security, and growth. Today I focus on teaching practical, real-world data engineering at scale and sharing those lessons with a large LinkedIn community.
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If you haven’t registered yet, you can still do (over 10k people already joined this challenge). Week 2 lectures will be out next week!