Introduction
Before jumping right into the skills required to become a cloud engineer, let’s learn what cloud engineering is all about. Cloud computing is a process of enabling/delivering computing resources as expandable, scalable, and perfectly elastic services over the internet. Applying engineering disciplines to cloud computing is termed as cloud engineering. It is a process of designing the systems that are essential to make the maximum use of the cloud resources’ power to solve business problems. The cloud services that cloud engineering focuses on are “infrastructure as a service”, “platform as a service”, and “software as a service”.
Cloud Engineer
The IT professional who is responsible for any technological responsibilities that are associated with cloud computing is known as a Cloud Engineer. The technological responsibilities include maintenance and support, management, planning, and design. The cloud engineer position includes multiple roles such as cloud security engineer, cloud systems engineer, cloud software engineer, cloud architect, and cloud network engineer. Each of these positions focuses on a particular kind of cloud computing instead of the entire technology.
Skills Needed to Become a Cloud Engineer
Cloud engineer is an evolutionary role for a new era in IT. They exhibit broad skills that go beyond any particular IT domain like storage, networking, or virtualisation. So, to succeed in the era of cloud computing, the IT professionals require a wide range of skills. One major way to acquire these skills is through cloud certifications. We will deal with them in the following section. Below here are some tips for IT professionals to gain cloud computing skills and make a lucrative cloud career.
Know Cloud Computing Inside and Out
The first thing an IT professional should do to become a cloud engineer is to master the major concepts of cloud computing. Start by learning the basics. Then, enhance your knowledge by focusing on key areas like cloud-oriented technologies or specific vendor platforms, as these provide you a competitive advantage. You can document your current skill sets and create a plan for developing skills for the role. Regarding the cloud-oriented technologies or specific vendor platforms, an IT professional must possess the skills that are required for the roles of operations, software, and architecture. Let’s know about these in-detail.
The methodologies such as redundancy, failover, high availability, and disaster recovery are central to operating software in the cloud, and these are the skills you usually get in an operations role. As long as you have knowledge on these concepts, the cloud architecture concepts can be learned with some and training. In the cloud computing world, the networking, storage, and virtualization skills can be very useful for operating and designing applications. You must have a strong general programming background to easily acquire these skills. Otherwise, the learning curve might be a bit too steep.
You must be familiar with at least one of OpenStack, Azure, and AWS(Amazon Web Services). Knowledge of one technology will easily translate to designing software for others. However, this involves a bit of learning on the job to do it well. Cloud architecture’s underlying foundation is based on Web Services and APIs. If you gain knowledge on these types of protocols and service patterns by working on websites, you will have a head start on mastering the fundamentals of the cloud.
Get Certified
Acquiring an industry standard certification gives you an extra edge in landing a cloud engineer job. The average salary of a Cloud Engineer is great but its better with a certification. These certifications will help your potential employers believe that your cloud computing skills are up to standard. The major cloud certifications needed for a cloud engineer are AWS certification, Azure certification, MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, CCNA Cloud, CCNP Cloud, and VMware VCP7 – CMA. Let’s discuss about AWS certification here. The range of certification types in an AWS Certification include Professional, Specialty, and Associate. AWS Certification covering the role of Solutions Architect is the AWS Solution Architect Associate. Once you complete the the Associate Level certification, you may progress to a Professional or a Specialty certification. AWS Certification recognizes IT professionals who possess the technical knowledge and skills essential for operating, designing, and deploying applications and infrastructure on AWS.
Think Like a Cloud Engineer
Cloud engineers must have a fundamental understanding around everything that is associated with the cloud. They must understand that their technology has the potential to touch everything within a data center. They must be familiar with programming languages including Ruby, Python, and Java. Cloud engineers must be proficient in modern cloud infrastructure and platforms along with traditional on-premises technologies. Most of the organizations that require cloud engineers are looking for professionals who have experience in AWS, Docker, Azure, Google compute engine, Rackspace, Linux, and OpenStack. Experience with DevOps, and databases like NoSQL are also important.
Conclusion
The cloud engineering services help businesses deal with the most challenging operations, architecture, and implementation requirements for cloud-based platforms, products, and applications on private, public, and hybrid environments. So, to evolve into the role of a cloud engineer, one must get AWS certification and understand its requirements and responsibilities and build the necessary skills as explained in the previous sections.