Developer Builds Cloud-Native Portfolio Using Terraform, AWS Lambda, and GitHub Actions

A developer with an IT Operations background completed the Cloud Resume Challenge, hosting a personal portfolio website using cloud-native infrastructure on AWS. Rather than using website builders like Wix or Squarespace, they built the project using Terraform for infrastructure-as-code, which they found more instructive than studying for their Terraform Associate certification. They leveraged an on-premises HashiCorp Vault running on a Kubernetes cluster to manage secrets and JWT authentication, keeping sensitive credentials off the cloud and behind a VPN. CI/CD was handled through GitHub Actions across two repositories — one for the frontend and one for the backend — each with separate testing and production branches. The project also incorporated an AWS Lambda-powered visitor counter with localStorage to prevent duplicate counts on page refresh.