AWS Portfolio Project · Single Bougie Free

This is what I built
without a cloud job.
Imagine what I could build with one.

I'm Katurah Bobo — a 4-year claims adjuster by day, and an aspiring Cloud Solutions Architect with a focus on FinOps by night. I'm fighting the "need experience to get experience" cycle by building my own proof. Single Bougie Free is a real, production AWS platform I built from scratch — with the right tools, no team, and a lot of drive. I'm looking for a leader who invests in potential — the kind who looks back and says they saw it first.

Cloud Solutions Architect FinOps AWS Academy Serverless Georgia Piedmont Tech College
See the work
Phase 1

Serverless by Design

Every piece of this pipeline was chosen intentionally. API Gateway handles intake, Lambda processes logic, DynamoDB stores members, SES delivers — and EventBridge fires the monthly batch automatically on the 1st. Zero servers to manage.

// Live architecture · production
Member onboarding flow
📋 Intake Form singlebougiefree.com
🔌 API Gateway REST · /prod/intake
λ Lambda Intake processor
🗄️ DynamoDB IntakeSubmissions table
✉️ SES Welcome + current issue
Archive retrieval flow
🗂️ Archive Page singlebougiefree.com
🔌 API Gateway REST · /archive
λ Lambda sbf-archive-index
🪣 S3 + CloudFront sbf-newsletter · OAC
Monthly send flow
📅 EventBridge
1st of month
📊 Airtable
Content curation
λ Lambda Batch send processor
✉️ SES
🪣 S3 Archive
API Gateway + Lambda
Why not a traditional server? The intake form gets bursts of submissions, not steady traffic. Serverless scales to zero between submissions — no idle EC2 cost.
Live
DynamoDB
Why not RDS? Member data is schemaless and read-heavy. DynamoDB's on-demand billing means I pay per request, not per hour for a running database instance.
Live
EventBridge + Batch Lambda
Why EventBridge? A cron-style rule fires the newsletter Lambda on the 1st of every month. No polling, no manual sends — fully automated delivery with zero intervention.
Live
Airtable as CMS
Why not a custom admin page? Airtable gives me a spreadsheet-style interface for curating 6 content sections without building a custom UI — keeping engineering effort where it matters.
Live
SES Welcome Email
Triggered on signup. New members receive the current newsletter immediately on intake — before being added to the EventBridge batch list.
Live
sbf-archive-index Lambda
Why not a database query? Queries the sbf-newsletter bucket and returns card-ready data to the front end. One Lambda replaces an entire CMS.
Live
CloudFront · Newsletter CDN
Why a separate distribution? Newsletter CDN layer with Origin Access Control. Newsletters are private in S3; CloudFront is the only way in.
Live
API Gateway · /archive Route
Why not a new endpoint? Extends the production API with a read-only archive endpoint, demonstrating multi-route API design on a single Gateway.
Live
CodePipeline · CI/CD
Full CI/CD pipeline: GitHub is the source of truth. CodePipeline detects every push, deploys to S3, and fires a CloudFront invalidation automatically — replacing a manual multi-step process with a single git push.
In Progress
Conceptual Architecture

Scaled for Monetization:
A Conceptual Architecture

This is not a roadmap. It's a design exercise — documenting the architecture SBF would require if it were to scale and monetize. Every service was chosen intentionally. Every decision I'm ready to defend.

⚠️   Designed but not deployed · Conceptual only
Real-time pipeline
Mood Trend Detection
Members submit regular mood surveys. Kinesis ingests the stream. Apache Flink detects trend anomalies in real time. If a member's score drops, SNS fires a personalized nudge — before they go quiet.
Kinesis Flink Lambda SNS
Engagement mechanic
Auto Baddie Promotions
Members progress through tiers: New → Freshman → Sophomore → Junior → Senior Baddie. EventBridge triggers a monthly Lambda that recalculates designations, updates DynamoDB, and sends congratulations via SNS.
EventBridge Lambda DynamoDB SNS
Analytics layer
Community Insights
Mood data, engagement patterns, and resource interactions feed into Athena for SQL-based querying. DataBrew handles scheduled data cleaning. QuickSight surfaces dashboards for admin and user views.
Athena DataBrew QuickSight S3
FinOps dashboard
Cost Intelligence
Cost Explorer API feeds a Lambda that writes to S3. Athena queries cost-by-service and cost-per-active-user. QuickSight renders a FinOps dashboard with idle resource detection and optimization recommendations.
Cost Explorer Lambda Athena QuickSight
Third-party data
Resource Hub Ingestion
Government and wellness datasets (BLS, HUD, mental health APIs) ingest via AWS Data Exchange. EventBridge schedules refreshes. DataBrew cleans and normalizes. S3 stores for downstream consumption.
Data Exchange EventBridge DataBrew S3
Infrastructure as code
Repeatable Deployments
The full SBF stack defined in CloudFormation — every Lambda, table, bucket, and API endpoint version-controlled and deployable in a single command. CI/CD via CodePipeline for automated releases.
CloudFormation CodePipeline IAM
Learning in Public

Always Deploying:
Cloud Skills in Progress

Currently completing AWS Cloud Operations (CIST 2484) at Georgia Piedmont Technical College. Every module maps directly to SBF's architecture. This tracker updates as I go.

IAM & Systems Operations Wk 2 · 05/28
→ IAM roles scoping Lambda permissions on SBF · Applied in production · Module pending
S3 Static Hosting Wk 2 · 05/28
→ SBF site hosted on S3 + CloudFront · Live
EC2 & Auto Scaling Wk 3–4 · 06/04
→ Scaling concepts applied to Lambda concurrency decisions
Lambda + API Gateway Wk 4 · 06/11
→ Powers SBF intake form + newsletter pipeline · Live
RDS, Aurora & DynamoDB Wk 5 · 06/18
→ DynamoDB IntakeSubmissions table already designed + live
VPC & Networking Wk 5 · 06/18
→ VPC isolation for future RDS or ECS deployments
CloudWatch & CloudTrail Wk 7 · 07/02
→ Adding monitoring + alerting to SBF newsletter Lambda
Cost Management & Trusted Advisor Wk 8 · 07/09
→ Foundation for SBF FinOps conceptual dashboard
CloudFormation & CI/CD Wk 9 · 07/16
→ Full SBF stack as Infrastructure as Code
CodePipeline · CI/CD Automation In Progress
→ GitHub → CodePipeline → S3 deploy → CloudFront auto-invalidation · In Progress

Progress bars update as modules are completed · Summer 2026

Contact

See the Potential?
Let's Talk.

I'm not looking for a job — I'm looking for someone willing to nurture what they see here. If that's you, let's connect.

⚙️
Message received.
Escalating to management.
— Katurah
🩷
Thanks Baddie!
The tea has been received.
We see you and we appreciate you.
Love, Katurah