
Maximize Your Chances: Your Guide to the AWS All Builders Welcome Grant
The AWS All Builders Welcome Grant offers a unique opportunity for early-career technologists to attend major AWS events like re:Invent or re:Inforce completely free of charge. If you want to apply, keep reading to maximize your chances of acceptance as the applications for re:invent 2025 open on 24 June.
Published Jun 8, 2025
The AWS All Builders Welcome Grant offers a unique opportunity for early-career technologists to attend major AWS events like re:Invent or re:Inforce completely free of charge. This program is designed to build the next generation of technical leaders and expand opportunities for diverse builders to develop and influence technology.
If you want to apply, keep reading to maximize your chances of acceptance as the applications for re:invent 2025 open on 24 June! I got accepted last year, as it was the last year I was eligible, and you can read about my experience and top sessions here.
The All Builders Welcome Grant is specifically for builders in the first five years of their career in cloud technology. It aims to remove financial barriers, making immersive learning, networking, and community-building opportunities accessible.
- You must be in the first five years of your career in cloud technology.
- You must be at least 21 years of age.
- It is open to anyone worldwide, regardless of their country of residence, but you need to secure your own visa. The grant covers airfare to the event location (e.g., Las Vegas, NV for re:Invent, Philadelphia for re:Inforce) and hotel accommodations.
- You should be someone who would benefit from the learning, career growth, and community-building opportunities and would otherwise be unable to attend due to financial reasons.
- You do not need any prior industry experience or specific qualifications, nor are AWS certifications required to apply.
- You cannot have been a grant recipient for the same event before. However, if you received the grant for re:Inforce, you can still apply for re:Invent, but not the same event twice.
The application typically involves a series of questions, including essays, where you can tell your story and demonstrate your potential. While the selection criteria are not public, insights from past forms provide valuable guidance to prepare.
- Be authentic and personal:
- Your application should reflect your unique story. The questions are designed to learn about who you are, your career aspirations, and how you've overcome challenges.
- Communicate authentically what this opportunity means to you.
- Avoid generic, AI-generated responses like those from ChatGPT, as they lack the personal touch and passion that makes an application stand out. Humans read these applications, and they look for genuine desire and ambition.
- Demonstrate passion and desire to learn:
- Showcase your enthusiasm for technology, cloud, and AWS. The demonstrated passion for cloud is a secret sauce for many successful applicants.
- Highlight your desire and ambition to grow, transform, and elevate your cloud career. Even if you have no industry experience, showing a strong interest, backed up by actions, is key.
- Highlight your achievements and efforts:
- Don't be shy when talking about your accomplishments. This includes given talks, pet projects, education, job accomplishments, hackathons, certifications, awards, or club involvement.
- Even small experiences matter, especially if you're a student or entry-level.
- If you're new to tech or don't have formal work experience, discuss your self-taught efforts, bootcamps, blogs, training programs (like AWS Restart), or personal projects. Show the effort you've put into your learning journey.
- Articulate your career plans and goals:
- Clearly describe your technology-related career plans and professional goals.
- Explain what you hope to gain or learn from attending re:Invent and how it will help you achieve those goals.
- Connect your current learning and efforts to how the conference can be a "step forward" or "transform" your career by providing new knowledge, connections, and clarity.
- Emphasize community impact and knowledge sharing:
- A significant aspect of the grant is fostering diversity and inclusion and building a community.
- Explain how your skills and knowledge have helped the community.
- Detail how you plan to share what you learn from the conference with others, for example at work, university, content creation or community meetups. This aligns with the grant's goal of bringing together diverse perspectives that fuel innovation. Supporting equity, diversity, and inclusiveness is a target area.
- Address challenges and overcoming barriers:
- Consider sharing experiences of overcoming barriers. This is particularly relevant if your background contributes to increasing the number of underrepresented groups in tech.
- Keep it concise and focused:
- Before writing, identify 2-3 key points that best represent you for each answer. This ensures your responses are clear, direct, and relevant, avoiding unnecessary fluff.
- Don't give up:
- The program attracts thousands of applicants, so don't be discouraged if you're not selected initially. Many successful grantees applied more than once. Persistence is key.
The application typically involves a series of questions, including essays, where you can tell your story and demonstrate your potential. While the selection criteria are not public, insights from past application forms provide valuable guidance to start preparing and understand the themes and types of responses the program seeks.
- Basic information and eligibility:
- Questions: These typically include your name, contact details, current employer, current job, and country of residence.
- The application also asks if you are an AWS employee and includes a section on underrepresented groups, aiming to enhance diversity and inclusion in tech.
- Experience and accomplishments (kikely short answer or structured input):
- "Technology related education, training, or coursework". This could include certifications, bootcamps, or self-taught efforts.
- "Tech related work or intern experience". This can include formal internships, technology-related jobs, or even startup experience. If you have no industry experience, it's encouraged to still apply and demonstrate your passion.
- Essay questions, these are crucial for showcasing your unique story, passion, and potential:
"Tell us about your technology related personal and/or professional activities and accomplishments."
- This is where you should highlight your achievements, even if they are small or from personal projects, rather than paid experiences. Discuss efforts you've made to advance your career and how your skills have helped the community.
- Focus on your passion for the field and your yearning for growth, discussing how what you're currently doing aligns with advancing your career.
"What are your technology related career plans and professional goals? What are you hoping to gain or learn from attending re:Invent?"
- Clearly articulate your professional goals and explain how attending the conference will help you achieve them.
- Connect the learning, networking, and community-building opportunities at re:Invent to specific steps forward in your career.
"What was your experience using AWS products or services and/or technical experience? If you're new to Tech, please describe Tech related aspirations and plans for this."
- If you're new to AWS, cloud or tech, describe your aspirations and plans for learning and using these technologies.
- If you have some experience, explain how re:Invent can help you deepen your knowledge, gain clarity, or accelerate your skills and career.
"What personal or professional accomplishment are you most proud of?"
- You should focus on telling your unique story with authenticity and passion, highlighting efforts and impact related to your journey in technology, something that truly encompasses who you are. Your experience and your drive.
- For example, successful applicants talked about their pride in making the transition to a tech role during the pandemic, completing a devops fundamentals bootcamp, and an internship. Another highlighted graduating from AWS Restart training and securing their first technical job in tech. I talked about getting accepted into the AWS Community Builders program.
- Be authentic and personal: Your responses should reflect your unique story, motivations, and the challenges you've faced and overcome. Avoid generic or AI-generated responses, as they lack the personal touch and passion that stands out to human readers.
- Show passion: Demonstrate your enthusiasm for technology, cloud, and AWS. Sincerity and a strong desire to learn and improve are key.
- Highlight community impact: Explain how your skills and knowledge have helped the community and how you plan to share what you learn with others.
- Concise and focused: Identify 2-3 key points for each answer to keep your responses clear and direct, think about using the STAR method, most essay questions will have a 500 word limit.
Remember, these are examples from previous years, and the exact wording of the questions may vary, but the underlying themes of passion, career growth, community involvement, and addressing barriers are consistently important to the grant program.
Applying for the All Builders Welcome Grant offers everything to gain and nothing to lose. If accepted, you receive:
- A full conference pass to re:Invent (or re:Inforce), which otherwise costs over $2000.
- Roundtrip airfare to Las Vegas, NV (or Philadelphia if applying to re:Inforce).
- Hotel accommodations for the duration of the event (typically 5 days/4 nights), with your own room.
- An Uber card or voucher for airport transfers and a gift card for incidental expenses.
- Reserved front-row seating in keynotes, meetups, and a welcome event.
- Mentoring opportunities with AWS experts and leadership.
- Access to a special Slack channel to connect with other grantees and program coordinators.
- Exclusive swag, including a unique backpack and badge.
- A supportive community of like-minded individuals from diverse backgrounds and countries.
This program provides an incredible platform to learn new skills, make invaluable connections, gain confidence, and accelerate your career in cloud technology.
The application takes effort, but it's worth it! Take the leap and you might just surprise yourself. Check out the AWS grant website for exact application details, opening and closing dates for re:Invent 2025, with applications announced to be opening around June 24th, 2025.