Ex-Helicopter Pilot Breaks Down Azure Cloud Resume Challenge Into 7 Free Steps

A cloud and DevSecOps professional, who transitioned into tech after years of flying helicopters commercially, has published a simplified guide to the Azure Cloud Resume Challenge. The challenge, created by Forrest Brazeal in 2020, asks candidates to build a resume as a fully functional cloud application, covering static hosting, serverless APIs, a database, and a CI/CD pipeline. The author warns that most existing walkthroughs quietly lead beginners into roughly $35 per month in costs, particularly when adding HTTPS on a custom domain. To address this, he restructured the original 16-step project into seven manageable chunks, flagging a free alternative at every stage where a paid option exists. He recommends the challenge to anyone entering cloud roles without a degree, noting that hiring managers already recognise what the project entails and how difficult it is to complete.