diff --git a/nix/overlay.nix b/nix/overlay.nix
--- a/nix/overlay.nix
+++ b/nix/overlay.nix
@@ -10,6 +10,32 @@
 prev:
 
 {
+  # Patch aws-sdk-cpp to automatically pick up header location
+  # specific to nixpkgs, as nixpkgs separates build-time and runtime
+  # depencenies (a saving of 400MB in header + generated files).
+  # In the case of c and c++, this means the header files are
+  # located in a separate directory from the libraries.
+  #
+  # From a developer perspective, this avoids having to manually specify
+  # the header location with `-DAWS_CORE_HEADER_FILE` each time
+  # one invokes `cmake` on the command line when using
+  # `find_package(AWSSDK COMPONENTS [comps])`
+  #
+  # For more information, see:
+  # - aws-sdk-cpp issue: https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-cpp/issues/2009
+  # - Nixpkgs fix: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/182918
+  aws-sdk-cpp = (prev.aws-sdk-cpp.overrideAttrs(oldAttrs:{
+    postPatch = oldAttrs.postPatch + ''
+      substituteInPlace cmake/AWSSDKConfig.cmake \
+        --replace 'C:/AWSSDK/''${AWSSDK_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR}/aws/core' \
+          'C:/AWSSDK/''${AWSSDK_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR}/aws/core"
+          "${placeholder "dev"}/include/aws/core'
+    '';
+  })).override {
+    # avoid rebuildilng all 300+ apis
+    apis = [ "core" "s3" "dynamodb" ];
+  };
+
   # add packages meant for just this repository
   amqp-cpp = prev.callPackage ./amqp-cpp.nix { };