I recently completed a project focused on the foundational elements of cloud deployment and DevOps. I started by provisioning an AWS EC2 instance and connecting to it securely using an SSH key pair, making sure to apply the necessary file permissions for security. For development, I used the VS Code Remote - SSH extension to work directly on the server files, which felt just like working locally. The application itself was a Java web app, and I relied on Apache Maven to handle all the building, compiling, and packaging. A major focus was security, requiring me to use an IAM user over the root account for daily tasks. This project successfully demonstrated my ability to build a robust application and manage its end-to-end deployment in a professional cloud environment.