How to Become a Cloud Engineer: Top Tips from Engineers

Cloud engineers keep our favorite services running and make our lives easier. Cloud computing is the power that keeps us able to enjoy everything from email and instant messaging to online classes and all of our streaming music and entertainment. You can play a role in creating, maintaining, and protecting these platforms and systems by becoming a cloud engineer.

If that sounds like the right career for you, you're in the right place. In this guide, we'll discuss:

• What is cloud computing, and what are the three main types?
• What does a cloud engineer do?
• What kind of jobs do cloud engineers have?
• What skills and certifications should a new engineer get?
• Six tips from cloud engineering experts
• And how to get started in a cloud engineering career

Once you learn the fundamentals, it'll quickly become apparent that cloud engineering has the potential to be a long, lucrative career with significant levels of job security.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the ability to use the Internet to support and offer a variety of computing services, such as data storage, servers, networking, software, AI and analytics, and databases. Cloud computing is popular because it generally allows services to be accessible by more people, run more efficiently, scale quickly, and adapt to each user's needs.

From a business standpoint, cloud computing often lowers costs because you pay for infrastructure as you need it, allowing you to scale up or down without purchasing more equipment. Like this website you're using now, most of our modern world runs on cloud computing and requires cloud engineers to keep everything running smoothly.

What are the three categories of cloud computing?

If you want to become a cloud engineer, you'll first want to learn about the three core types of cloud computing that engineers work on because you may ultimately end up specializing in one. Engineers most commonly split up cloud computing and engineering roles and work into these categories:

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): These services give companies access to virtualized architecture, including storage and servers. It alleviates a business's need to buy hardware directly. IaaS is often a tool used to promote growth and includes important tools that most people think of when it comes to cloud computing: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): A PaaS cloud is one that allows developers to build and test out their applications on a virtual platform. So, developers don't need to buy infrastructure and can easily scale their apps or test under specific circumstances. A PaaS cloud will often be created within an IaaS cloud service to minimize equipment needs. These are tools that power many services, such as the Google App Engine or Windows Azure.
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): SaaS is the more traditional type of cloud computing where a company pays to have its application or software hosted on cloud servers. SaaS enables services to work within browsers, so most people are familiar with it for things like Gmail, Dropbox, or accessing your Upwork messages.

What does a cloud engineer do?

While you'll be working in cloud computing environments and applications realms, cloud engineers tend to follow standard developer career paths. You'll often be working on front-end, back-end, and DevOps tasks. Together, these three areas give you a good idea of the primary duties and responsibilities of cloud engineers:

• Designing cloud software
• Create the user interfaces for platforms
• Implementing software and cloud systems
• Ensuring applications can scale and remain reliable
• Securing data and user credentials
• Performing updates and maintenance on cloud tools
• Keeping cloud systems up and running
• Planning development and updates for applications
• Testing applications and managing testing environments
• Migrating on-premises systems to cloud environments
• Integrating cloud tools

11 examples of cloud engineering job titles

Cloud engineering covers the type of work that you'll do, but jobs themselves can vary based on your skills, client needs, and more. There's often overlap among titles, roles, and responsibilities. Two companies that are looking for a cloud architect can have wildly different requirements. So, keep your eyes peeled for these types of jobs but always be sure to read descriptions thoroughly. That's also great advice if you apply to job postings as a freelance cloud engineer.

Here are a few of the more common ways you'll find cloud engineering positions listed on job boards and at major companies:

1. Cloud administrator

2. Cloud architect

3. Cloud developer

4. Cloud security engineer

5. Infrastructure engineer

6. IT engineer

7. Network engineer

8. Senior software engineer

9. Solutions architect

10. System operations engineer/system administrator

11. Systems engineer‍

What are the most in-demand markets for cloud engineers?

"Overall, pretty much every market at the moment is in a state of digital transformation," said Aliaksandr Shulyak, a cloud and DevOps engineer at Gearset. "I would highlight industries such as Financial and Medical, as there are plenty of startups who need to have a rapid start and don't have time to create everything from scratch at the very beginning of the business."

Based on comments from our experts and some leading research, today's top locations for cloud engineering work are:

• New York City
• San Diego, California
• Washington, D.C.
• Seattle, Washington
• Chicago, Illinois
• Austin, Texas
• Dallas, Texas,
• Houston, Texas
• Tokyo, Japan
• Osaka, Japan
• Fukuoka, Japan
• London, England
• Paris, France
• Berlin, Germany
• Dublin, Ireland
• Amsterdam, Netherlands

These are the places to look for clients and companies, but you don't necessarily have to live there. Nearly all the experts we spoke to say they've seen an increase in hiring and relying on remote talent, allowing you the freedom of a freelancing career.

6 tips to becoming a cloud engineer

Developers have a few pathways to getting started, but experts say the steps to become a cloud engineer are relatively straightforward. Secure your education and knowledge of the industry, look for current professionals to help, master skills for specific types of work, and then create a place for people to find you, such as looking for cloud computing jobs on Upwork.

1. Get familiar with the industry

The world of cloud computing is changing quickly, and many new tools are arriving each quarter. So, new cloud engineers will want to learn the basics about the industry, starting with the core cloud providers and how cloud engineering operates differently from other development and testing types.

"There are many cloud providers out there, but the main ones are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform," said Caleb Hoffman, a cloud engineer at Coderus. "All share similar services, but to begin your cloud journey, I would suggest just focusing on one platform to start. I chose AWS because they seem to be the most popular option at the moment."

"What sets cloud engineers apart from others is the high volume of releases, the reliance on continuous deployment, and the need to understand how code is deployed to the cloud," said Jakob Jónasson, Director of Engineering at Tempo Software. "Repetition in problem-solving will make you faster and is required to make you a good cloud engineer. You will also need to be very familiar with how to secure data for the end-user, as well as knowing the Kubernetes and Docker services."

Multiple experts also suggest looking for a mentor.

2. Find a mentor

Cloud engineering work is growing rapidly, and for some companies, the need is growing too fast to keep up. That changes the way you will need to look at work and pursue a career. For the near future, one of your best ways to create a career is to find a mentor and ask for help.

Mentors can point you to the right people and organizations that need your skill set. They can also make introductions or show you where to improve. In many instances, companies will ask established professionals for referrals when they need to grow in new areas such as cloud engineering. Having a mentor who can refer you to these companies, along with preparing you for interviews, may help you get ahead.

Mentors can be young professionals, too. Ask others in your community how they got started and what events or groups they used to find work. This builds your networking capabilities, which our experts highly recommended.

"One thing that can help you get a much stronger start is networking, and it's also something you can start doing as you train," says Gwen Rivet, Chief Marketing Officer at BitDegree. "Join communities of learners, consult cloud aficionados, build connections. The more people know you're looking for projects, the higher the chance they will come to you."

3. Know which skills you need and develop them

You might want to find a mentor first because the list of preferred cloud engineering skills and languages is changing over time. There are many things to learn and ways to develop that knowledge, such as school, certifications, and hands-on experience. Based on conversations with experts, here are some of the skills that you'll need as a baseline for getting started.

1. General computer and systems knowledge.
2. Programming knowledge that includes the languages mentioned in the next section.
3. Database knowledge for storing, managing, accessing, and using the data contained in a database.
4. Cybersecurity best practices to secure information in general and cloud-specific needs around user identities and platform management.
5. Virtualization and related technologies that reduce IT costs for companies, especially in terms of storage, computing, and network elements.
6. Datacenter utilization and design are advanced skills but may help you land larger clients or become a better engineer for managing information
7. QA (quality assurance) includes testing and controlling both processes and products to keep them secure and stable.
8. DevOps (development and operations) is a general term for the skill of understanding both the development and operations side of a project so that you can create and manage cloud systems more quickly and efficiently
9. Project management: Learning the Agile and SCRUM practices will help cloud engineers follow development best practices and make you a valuable team member.

And if you're wondering how to become a freelance cloud engineer, remember that you're running an entire business, not just providing programming. That means learning some business development and client management. The best place to start here is with communication and project management because these will help you win clients and keep them happy.

"Respond quickly to job posts and continually follow up," says Amit Gami, the founder of Card Payment Guru. "I rate proactivity highly, and there is no better way to prove this than the speed of your first message. Keep up good communication throughout the project and own your work. Some of the best freelancers we've had are those who solve problems on their own and don't shift these to the client."

4. Learn different programming languages

You'll also need to ensure you learn a data-oriented programming language. Cloud engineering requires data-oriented programming languages on top of general-purpose ones. Based on interviews, here are the most useful programming languages for cloud engineers:

• Java
• AngularJS
• Python
• AWS
• SQL
• C++
• PHP

"When it comes to types of work, some trends have become clear on a larger scale," says Pablo Listingart, Founder of ComIT. "Java, AngularJS, C++, and Python are all common languages, but the particularities of local markets are always important. Aside from having a general knowledge of different coding languages, cloud engineers should also have a fluency with different tech platforms: SQL, Spark, and Scala, to name a few."

Frameworks like Hadoop, which is primarily written in Java, are also useful tools.

5. Get a certification

For you reading this right now, the education market looks different than nearly every other time since cloud computing became a standard practice. There is a massive demand for cloud engineers, so a combination of industry and education providers are trying to respond quickly and effectively.

This means that a bachelor's degree in a related field is helpful but no longer the default for what many companies require. Certifications have become extremely valuable, even some of the shorter ones. In the U.S., colleges like Santa Monica College are offering industry-recognized certifications that you can obtain after just four classes.

Certifications do not necessarily replace traditional education, but they're all many people need to get their foot in the door. Here are some of the most recommended certifications from our experts:

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
• AWS Certified Developer – Associate
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
• CCNA (Cisco)
• Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP)
• CompTIA Cloud+
• Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer
• Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect
• Google Certified Professional Data Engineer
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• Microsoft Certified: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

"There are two main types of certifications: vendor-neutral and vendor-specific. The former ones typically cover general concepts pretty well, but even knowing them, you might still experience some hiccups as you start working with a particular platform," says Rivet. "Suppose you want to start working on actual projects as soon as possible. In that case, we'd recommend opting for a vendor-specific foundational-level certification from a major platform (AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud) first and then going for a role-focused one of a higher level."

6. Be prepared for interviews

And here's something that will come as a relief to you. The experts and companies we talked to don't want to try and trick anyone during a job interview or when hiring a freelancer. You might get asked some technical questions, but what they care most about is your ability to perform the tasks.

So, some of the more common interview questions to get ready for include:

• Why did you pick this field?
• Where did you get your start?
• What do you enjoy about your work?
• What recent projects were your favorites?
• How comfortable are you in a team? How do you manage disputes in a team?
• What are you excited about next? What do you read?

From there, you'll start diving into more specifics about the proposed work and your past projects. Walk in with as much information as you can and discuss when you've done something similar or why this project excites you.

"From a more junior person, I would expect the implementation of concepts in any possible way with any possible technical stack," says Shulyak. "From the more senior person, I would expect to hear some best-practices usage and a lot of technical details about the design of those implementations."

The final piece of advice is to come ready to quote your price. "On the initial consultation calls, it is incredibly frustrating when freelancers don't have a price range or estimate at hand," says Gami. "I automatically place them in the no pile for lack of planning and inability to compare on a crucial metric."

Where to start finding cloud engineering jobs and being your career

One of the core benefits of becoming a cloud engineer is that you can create your path forward. So many companies need these professionals that there are no defined steps to become a cloud engineer, and you can move between several types of work. As you learn more programming languages and dive into specialists like cloud security architect, opportunities will continue to expand.

Getting started, however, doesn't have to be that complex. Most traditional job and hiring boards have full-time cloud engineer roles available right now. However, if you're still taking certifications, want to try many types of projects, or want to be the master of your schedule, you can also look for freelance cloud engineer jobs.

Head over to our cloud computing jobs page, and you can quickly see the types of roles people need to be filled right away. You can pick and choose the right fit for your skills and availability, all while building up a roster of work and referrals that may ultimately land you a dream job—either at a company or running your own cloud engineering company.

Upwork makes it easy to get started by allowing you to create a profile quickly, add past projects, verify credentials, and start applying for work. The world is waiting, and your next is as simple as signing up and letting people know you're ready.