AWS Consulting Services for US Startups and SMBs
Engineers who architect, migrate, secure, and cost-optimize your AWS estate, then stay on to run it if you want. Terraform, containers, serverless, and CI/CD built in your own account, from a team with 12+ years and 50+ projects behind it.
What AWS Consulting Actually Involves for a US Team
AWS consulting covers the full life of a workload on Amazon Web Services: designing the architecture, migrating or building it, securing it, controlling its cost, and operating it once it is live. We anchor every decision to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, so trade-offs are made against a published standard rather than one engineer's habits, and everything is defined in code so it can be reviewed, repeated, and handed over.
For most US startups and SMBs the questions are practical. Which region: usually us-east-1 (N. Virginia), which often gets new AWS services first, or us-west-2 (Oregon) for West Coast latency or a second region for disaster recovery. How to structure accounts so production is isolated from experiments. How to get ready for the SOC 2 or PCI DSS questions that enterprise customers ask before they sign. And why the bill keeps growing when traffic has not.
AWS runs on a shared responsibility model: AWS secures the underlying cloud, and you are responsible for how you configure what runs in it. IAM permissions, encryption, logging, network boundaries, and cost controls are yours to get right. That configuration layer is where most security findings, audit gaps, and surprise bills come from, and it is the layer we work on.
What We Do on AWS
Eight service lines covering the full AWS lifecycle, each with the specific tooling we use
Well-Architected Reviews
A structured review of your AWS estate against all six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, ending in a ranked list of fixes rather than a generic report.
- Six-pillar findings with severity
- Quick wins vs larger remediation
- Written roadmap your team can act on
AWS Cost Optimization
Engineering work that lowers the bill: right-sizing, Savings Plans, Graviton, storage tiering, and tagging so every dollar of spend maps to a team, product, or customer.
- Right-sizing with Compute Optimizer data
- Savings Plans and Reserved Instance strategy
- Cost allocation tags, Budgets, anomaly alerts
Migration to AWS
Move from on-prem, a VPS host, Heroku, or another cloud with a per-workload strategy (rehost, replatform, or refactor) and a phased cutover with a rollback plan.
- Discovery and per-workload strategy
- AWS DMS for database replication
- Phased cutover behind health checks
Infrastructure as Code
Every VPC, IAM role, database, and queue defined in Terraform or AWS CDK, reviewed in pull requests, and applied through CI, so environments are reproducible and auditable.
- Terraform or AWS CDK, matched to your team
- Remote state, modules, and drift detection
- Separate dev, staging, and prod accounts
Containers: ECS, EKS, Fargate
Containerize and run your services on the simplest platform that fits: ECS on Fargate for most teams, EKS when you genuinely need Kubernetes.
- Docker images and ECR pipelines
- ECS on Fargate or EKS with managed node groups
- Autoscaling, blue-green, and rolling deploys
Serverless: Lambda and API Gateway
Event-driven and spiky workloads on Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, and EventBridge, where you pay per request instead of keeping idle servers running.
- APIs on API Gateway and Lambda
- Queues and events with SQS and EventBridge
- Cold-start, timeout, and concurrency tuning
Security Baseline
A multi-account landing zone with AWS Organizations and Control Tower, least-privilege IAM, and GuardDuty and Security Hub turned on and actually triaged.
- Organizations, Control Tower, and SCPs
- IAM Identity Center and least-privilege roles
- GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, Config
CI/CD, Observability, and DR
Pipelines that ship safely, monitoring that pages the right person, and backups you have actually restored, with recovery targets agreed up front.
- GitHub Actions or CodePipeline deploys
- CloudWatch metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards
- AWS Backup, restore drills, agreed RTO and RPO
Security Baseline and Audit Readiness
Every estate we build starts from the same baseline: separate accounts under AWS Organizations, a Control Tower landing zone with guardrails, single sign-on through IAM Identity Center, least-privilege roles instead of long-lived access keys, KMS encryption, and GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, and AWS Config enabled across every account. On top of that, here is how the architecture supports the audits US buyers most often ask about.
SOC 2
A SOC 2 report is issued by an independent CPA firm, and auditors look for evidence that controls exist and operate. We set up the infrastructure side of that evidence: changes made through reviewed IaC pull requests, an organization-wide CloudTrail, AWS Config rules, encryption by default, and least-privilege access with SSO, so evidence collection tools such as Vanta or Drata have something real to read.
Healthcare Data
If you handle patient health data, we keep it on the AWS services approved for it, design the account boundary around it, encrypt it with KMS, restrict and log every access path, and document the safeguards your compliance lead needs.
PCI DSS
The cheapest PCI DSS scope is the smallest one. Where possible we keep card data out of your systems entirely by using a tokenizing payment processor such as Stripe. Where you must touch card data, we isolate the cardholder data environment in its own account and network segment so a QSA has a clearly bounded scope to assess.
To be clear about our role: we design and build infrastructure that supports an audit and document the decisions behind it. We do not certify compliance, issue reports, or guarantee an audit outcome. That is the job of your independent auditor, QSA, or compliance lead, and we work alongside them.
A Good Fit If
- US startups and SMBs running, or about to run, production workloads on AWS
- teams whose AWS bill has grown faster than revenue and nobody owns it
- products heading into a SOC 2 or PCI DSS audit, or handling health data, that need the infrastructure side in order
- migrations off on-prem, VPS hosting, Heroku, or another cloud
- estates built by a previous contractor that now need a review and an owner
Not a Fit If
- you need an AWS Partner for resale, credits, or partner funding programs
- you want a compliance certification or a guarantee of audit outcome (only your auditor can give that)
- one-off questions that AWS documentation or AWS Support can answer
- cost reviews where nobody is willing to act on the recommendations
- workloads committed to Azure or GCP with no plan to use AWS
Planning a full move to AWS? See cloud migration services. Need product engineering on top of the cloud? See product engineering.
How to Work With Us
Most teams start with an assessment, then decide whether to build with us, run it themselves, or keep us on for ongoing support.
Assessment
Where most engagements start
A Well-Architected review of your current estate (or architecture design for a new product), a cost and security findings list, and a prioritized roadmap. You get a fixed estimate for the next phase before committing to it.
- Six-pillar Well-Architected review
- Cost and security findings
- Prioritized roadmap and fixed estimate
Build
We implement the roadmap: landing zone, infrastructure as code, migration, containers or serverless, CI/CD, and observability, delivered in your accounts and repositories with documentation and handover.
- Landing zone and IaC
- Migration or new build with phased cutover
- Runbooks, docs, and knowledge transfer
Ongoing Managed Support
After launch, we keep the estate healthy within agreed support hours: monitoring and alerting, patching, backups and restore tests, and a monthly cost and security review.
- Agreed support hours and escalation path
- Patching, upgrades, and restore tests
- Monthly cost and posture review
Platforms We Build and Run on AWS
Production platforms we built and operate on AWS. Each links to the full case study.
RunCode
Our cloud-based coding platform with multiple language support, collaboration workflows, and AI-assisted coding, running on Django, Docker, and Kubernetes on AWS.
Read case studyOnlineCompiler.io
Sandboxed code execution for 12 languages with a REST API, WebSocket support, an embeddable widget, and containerized execution on Docker and Kubernetes on AWS.
Read case studyRefactored.ai
Multi-tenant upskilling, assessment, and interview practice platform with AI-driven audio and video feedback, running on Kubernetes on AWS.
Read case study"MicroPyramid team is a life saver. Found them after trying multiple development teams for Python Django development and they are best to work with and highly talented. They know how to deploy apps to AWS and understand customer needs."
AWS Consulting FAQs
Straight answers to what US founders and engineering leads ask before starting an AWS engagement
What is AWS consulting, and what does an AWS consultant actually do?
AWS consulting is the work of architecting, migrating, securing, and cost-optimizing your applications on Amazon Web Services. In practice that means reviewing your current setup against the AWS Well-Architected Framework, designing the account structure and architecture, migrating workloads in phases, defining everything in Terraform or AWS CDK, setting up CI/CD and monitoring, hardening security, and then reviewing cost regularly. We do this hands-on inside your own AWS account rather than handing over a slide deck.
What is an AWS Well-Architected review, and what do we get from it?
A Well-Architected review assesses your AWS workload against the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability. You get a list of findings ranked by risk, the quick wins you can fix in days, the larger items that need planning, and a written roadmap. It is the usual first step with us because it shows where the real risk and waste are before anyone commits to a larger project.
What drives the cost of AWS consulting?
The main drivers are the size and complexity of your estate (number of accounts, services, and environments), whether we are migrating an existing system or building new, how much of the infrastructure is already in code, the compliance requirements in play (SOC 2, PCI DSS, or health-data controls add design and documentation work), and whether you want a one-off project or ongoing managed support. We scope a fixed estimate after the initial assessment so you know the shape of the work before committing.
How do you reduce our AWS bill without a risky re-architecture?
Most of the savings come from low-risk changes, applied in order: tag spend to owners and set AWS Budgets and Cost Anomaly Detection, right-size oversized EC2 and RDS instances using Compute Optimizer data, switch off idle and non-production resources outside working hours, cover only the steady baseline with Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, move suitable Linux workloads to Graviton, and fix storage and data transfer (S3 lifecycle rules, gp3 volumes, VPC endpoints instead of NAT Gateway traffic). We do not promise a percentage up front, because the result depends on how your estate was built; the assessment tells you where the money is going and which changes are worth making.
How do you migrate to AWS with minimal downtime?
We avoid big-bang cutovers. Each workload gets its own strategy (rehost, replatform, or refactor), the target environment is built in infrastructure as code first, databases are replicated with AWS DMS using full load plus ongoing change data capture, and the application is tested on AWS against live-synced data. Traffic then moves in stages using Route 53 weighted records or load balancer rules, watched by health checks, with the old environment kept ready for rollback until the new one has run cleanly. Most migrations finish with a short, planned switchover window rather than an outage.
Can your AWS architecture help us pass a SOC 2 or PCI DSS audit?
It can make the infrastructure side of the audit far easier, but we do not certify you or guarantee an outcome: SOC 2 reports come from an independent CPA firm and PCI DSS assessments from a QSA. What we do is build the controls auditors look for: reviewed infrastructure-as-code changes, organization-wide CloudTrail logging, least-privilege IAM with SSO, KMS encryption, GuardDuty and Security Hub, isolated accounts for health or cardholder data, and documentation of each decision. AWS operates under a shared responsibility model, so configuration is where most audit findings come from.
Should we hire an in-house DevOps engineer, use a local consultancy, or work with an established offshore team?
Hire in-house if cloud infrastructure is core to your product and there is enough steady work to keep a senior engineer fully busy, accepting that one person cannot cover architecture, security, cost, and on-call alone. A local US consultancy fits when you need on-site presence, a US entity for procurement, or AWS Partner funding programs. An established offshore team like ours fits when you want experienced engineers owning architecture, migration, cost, and operations together without a full-time hire, and you are comfortable working partly async. We will tell you honestly when in-house is the better call.
Do you provide ongoing support, and can you take over an AWS estate someone else built?
Yes to both. Ongoing managed support covers monitoring and alerting, patching and upgrades, backups with periodic restore tests, and a monthly cost and security review, within support hours and an escalation path agreed in writing at the start; we reply to new requests within 24 hours. Much of our work is inheriting estates built by a previous contractor or an engineer who has moved on: we start with a Well-Architected review to map what exists and what is risky, then stabilize it, bring it into infrastructure as code, and either run it or hand it back to your team with documentation.
Do we own our AWS account and infrastructure?
Yes. Everything runs in your own AWS accounts under your billing, and you own all infrastructure as code, configuration, credentials, and documentation. We work in your repositories through roles you can revoke at any time, so your team or another provider could take over cleanly. There is no lock-in and no proprietary layer you have to keep paying us to maintain.
Get a Straight Answer on Your AWS Setup
Tell us what you are running, what it costs, and what worries you. We will tell you what we would look at first and whether we are the right team for it.