Subject-matter expert
Scott Pletcher
Scott got started with IT in his early teens when his parents bought him a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 from Radio Shack. Since then, he’s spent thirty years in corporate IT management and leadership roles, earned numerous AWS and PMI certifications, and created training content for A Cloud Guru. When he’s not deploying cloud architectures or teaching others how to use AWS services, Scott enjoys listening to 80s metal music while turning a pile of bargain bin lumber into something that would make Norm Abrams proud.
Credentials
Certifications Scott Pletcher holds
Vendor-issued credentials Scott holds — the hands-on IT background behind the courses your team will train on.
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
- AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
- Project Management Professional (PMI-PMP)
- Google Cloud Certified Professional - Cloud Architect
- Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
Training coverage
Courses that carry Scott Pletcher's expertise into your team plan
Use these courses as proof of coverage for the roles and technologies your team needs to support.
Courses Scott Pletcher teaches
10 courses
AWS
AIP-C01
This expert-level AWS AI training is designed to help you pass the AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Professional exam (AIP-C01). The course focuses on building, deploying, and operating production-ready generative AI applications using AWS AI services. You’ll work with practical architectures like RAG and agentic AI, manage prompts, and learn how to optimize GenAI systems for cost, performance, and responsible use. Although it's not required, you might want to start with the AWS Certified Data Engineer or Machine Learning Engineer Associate certifications before you attempt this AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Professional course.
AWS
ANS-C01
This expert AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty training prepares engineers to design, implement, and secure complex hybrid cloud architectures. You'll prepare for the ANS-C01 exam as you learn to manage AWS VPC environments, Transit Gateway, and Direct Connect in accordance with the Well-Architected Framework. You'll also validate your skills in network optimization, DNS management with Route 53, and implementing robust network security across multi-account organizations. This course also includes an AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty practice exam, to help you reinforce skills and certify with confidence.
AWS
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
This AWS Cloud Practitioner training prepares you for the CLF-C02 exam by covering AWS infrastructure, core services (compute, storage, AI/ML), and the Well-Architected Framework. You’ll build foundational literacy in cloud security, networking, and pricing models across the four exam domains. You'll also learn to identify key resources via the Console or CLI while navigating the shared responsibility model and cost-management. This AWS Cloud Practitioner training includes interactive quizzes, a study guide, and a full practice exam to ensure you pass with confidence.
AWS
AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate
This AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate training teaches you to design, build, and manage scalable, secure data pipelines on AWS. Master powerful tools like S3, Glue, Redshift, and Lambda, and develop the cloud skills companies need to optimize data workflows, ensure security, and achieve compliance. This course is perfect as DEA-C01 exam prep, or as a training resource for data professionals who want to verify their data engineering skills.
AWS
AWS Certified Security Specialty
Prepare for the AWS Certified Security Specialty (SCS-C03) certification with expert-led training. Learn to secure AWS environments by managing access controls with IAM Roles Anywhere, protecting data through Amazon Security Lake, and responding to threats using Amazon CodeGuru Security. In this course, you'll cover securing GenAI applications and leveraging Amazon Q Developer alongside advanced networking like AWS Verified Access and Layer 3-7 firewall rules. This course covers essential tools and techniques, including AWS Verified Permissions, to safeguard cloud systems and make you stand out as a candidate for cloud security roles. This AWS training is ideal for cloud administrators and teams looking to enhance security skills or onboard new team members.
AWS
AWS CloudOps Engineer
This AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate training course prepares you to manage and scale cloud environments like a modern operations professional. This course focuses on high-level automation and observability. You’ll learn the deployment of infrastructure via CDK templates, secure hybrid environments with IAM Roles Anywhere, and maintain visibility through advanced CloudWatch and EKS/ECS metric collection. By the end of this course, you’ll have the technical skills to manage complex cloud initiatives, and the knowledge required to pass the COA-C03 exam and earn your CloudOps certification (formerly known as the SysOps Associate Certification). Start training now with unlimited practice exams and expert guidance.
AWS
AWS Governance at Scale
As AWS footprints grow, inconsistent account structures, identity patterns, tagging, and deployment practices create security gaps, cost surprises, and audit friction. **AWS Governance at Scale** gives IT Directors a structured way to move cloud, security, and platform teams from ad hoc administration to repeatable governance across a multi-account AWS environment. The course is built for practitioners who already support AWS operations. It follows a deliberate sequence: multi-account organization, guardrails, centralized identity, tagging and classification, and automated account provisioning, then non-compliance detection, automated remediation, threat finding, public edge defense, egress control, fleet management, governed infrastructure distribution, and cost and compliance posture. A final module covers open source governance tools that complement native AWS tooling. This is not a certification course. It is an operating-model course for teams preparing for audits, standardizing runbooks, or scaling account growth without losing control. Training Managers can assign the 14 modules, about 12.6 hours in total, as a Playlist and track progress with Team Reporting. Team Leads can use the sequence to align change-management expectations across teams.
AWS
AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate (MLA-C02)
Many ML projects stall between experiment and production because the team lacks the AWS operations skills to run them safely. This course gives IT Directors and Training Managers a structured way to close that gap. It treats ML engineering mainly as MLOps, much of it the DevOps and SysOps work your infrastructure staff already know, applied to SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock. DevOps engineers, system administrators, and cloud practitioners learn to secure ML environments with IAM and network isolation instead of quick-setup defaults. They also learn to clean messy source data with AWS Glue and Glue DataBrew and to train models with SageMaker built-in algorithms, JumpStart, and Script Mode. The course then covers automating workflows with SageMaker Pipelines, monitoring for bias and drift, and controlling training spend with Spot instances and SageMaker Neo. Later skills extend into foundation models, retrieval augmented generation, and agentic workflows on Amazon Bedrock. Each skill includes exam-style validation questions aligned to the AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (MLA-C02) objectives, plus provided notebooks for hands-on work in each learner's AWS account. Team reporting shows per-learner progress and completion, with exports Training Managers can use as evidence while planning a certification push.
AWS
AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02)
Cloud architecture risk rarely comes from not knowing a single AWS service. It comes from choosing the wrong combination of account structure, identity, networking, governance, resilience, and cost controls. This expert-level course builds the architecture judgment senior engineers need to make those calls at enterprise scale and prepares them for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C02) exam. Built for cloud architects, platform engineers, and Team Leads who already work with AWS, the course follows a fictitious company through scenario-based projects. Learners modernize a legacy PHP site from a colo environment, apply organizational guardrails and centralized compliance remediation, design multi-account and hybrid connectivity, plan migrations, and connect RPO/RTO targets to recovery architecture. Plan for about 25 hours per learner, assigned in order because the projects build on each other across skills. IT Directors and Training Managers can pair the course with CBT Nuggets Playlists, Practice Exams, virtual labs, and Team Reporting to standardize assignments and track progress during a certification push.
CompTIA
CompTIA Cloud+
Prepare for the CompTIA Cloud+ certification (CV0-004) with expert-led training in cloud security, IAM, cost optimization, and hybrid cloud operations. This associate-level course is designed for sysadmins and IT pros transitioning to cloud roles. Learn how to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure, support multi-cloud environments, and apply vendor-neutral best practices. Build the skills employers want and get ready to pass the Cloud+ certification exam.
Buyer proof
How Howard County's IT Department Upskilled 80 People, Protected a 600-Server Migration, and Kept Its Training Budget Intact
Local Government · Howard County, MD · 80 employees across 8 disciplines
CBT Nuggets gave Howard County's Department of Technology something bootcamps never could: the flexibility to train on their own time, in their own environments, with hands-on labs and practice exams that actually prepared staff for their everyday job.
- Physical servers migrated to HyperV virtual environments
- ~600
- Distinct technical disciplines under one department
- 8
- License engagement reported to leadership
- 100%
“I include our leadership, so they know that we're engaging with the training. When the budget comes and they see CBT Nuggets, they say: ‘Oh yeah. We keep that.’”
Elizabeth Nwadiuko
Technical Services Manager