CI/CD Pipeline Setup for Web Application on AWS

Hey there We're a small but growing educational startup, and honestly, we've been doing things the old-school way when it comes to deployments. It's time to fix that.
We have a web application running on AWS, and right now, every deployment is manual. SSH into the server, pull the code, restart, cross fingers, and hope nothing breaks. You know the drill. We need someone who can help us set up a proper CI/CD pipeline so our team can ship faster and sleep better at night.
Here's what we're working with right now:
∙ (Express) backend with a React frontend
∙ Code lives on GitHub
∙ Manually deploying to AWS EC2 instances
∙ PostgreSQL database on RDS
∙ Zero automation at this point
What we're hoping to get done:
1. Set up a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions, or if you think there's something better for our setup, we're open to hearing why
2. Automate the full cycle of testing, building, and deploying for both staging and production
3. Put proper environme...