This is actually pretty well described in the docs. > Before you create worker nodes, you must create an IAM role with the > following IAM policies: > > AmazonEKSWorkerNodePolicy > > AmazonEKS_CNI_Policy > > AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryReadOnly Also you need to make sure that this role could be assumed by EKS. { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com" }, "Action": "sts:AssumeRole" } ] }