Left the last comment, but I'm leaving another one because I ended up working with Karthik beyond the single session. Honestly I almost want to keep this comment to myself so that I can monopolize his time :) To put some context here - I'd probably consider myself an intermediate coder at best, with practically zero experience in Docker and AWS prior to working with Karthik.
After several sessions with him, I can absolutely say he's one of the most patient and clearest communicators I've ever worked with. While I went through the basic documentation for AWS and Docker before hand, I had a lot of trouble understanding what I was reading and what was going on prior to working through getting my app running on AWS with Karthik. He was fantastic at helping me connect the dots. And troubleshooting! Some of the challenges we ran into were not easy but he was a machine. Absolutely could not have asked for a better mentor.
I now feel comfortable with the idea of containers, how to containerize with Docker, spinning up Elastic Containers, creating ec2 instances, and troubleshooting all the stuff in between. We also ended up setting Cloudwatch logs to help troubleshoot which was kind of neat as well.
I plan to continue working with Karthik as time allows as I know there's plenty to learn about best practices from him. **Hire this guy**