Cloud computing is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing IT segments across the industry. Gartner says that Global end-user spending on public cloud services is anticipated to experience a significant growth of 20.4%, reaching a total of $678.8 billion in 2024. It means cloud engineers will have bright days ahead with more organizations raising career roles in cloud computing.
However, more opportunities and vacancies mean more competition and struggles. If you are a cloud engineer and wish to escalate your profile in cloud computing in 2024, you must master specific skills and domains.
This blog will take you through some of the top skills for cloud engineers in 2024 and some certifications to streamline the upskilling process. But before that, let’s quickly look at the scope of cloud engineers in 2024.
Scope of a cloud engineer in 2024
If you are a cloud engineer wondering if you have a scope to escalate in your field, then the answer is clear.
Statistics suggest that organizations can save up to 40% of their costs by switching to cloud infrastructures and cloud-based services, paving the way for countless cloud computing domains and tasks. Cloud engineers will play a critical role in elevating the organizational ecosystem.
Moreover, even the established players are set to create numerous employment opportunities in 2023. Some big-shot names include VMWare, Amazon, CISCO, Accenture, Microsoft, Google, HCL, Adobe, etc.
To help you better understand the demand and scope of a cloud engineer in 2023, here’s a breakup of cloud engineer salaries for numerous roles:
Cloud engineer salary based on roles
DevOps Engineer
A solutions architect enjoys high global confidence with an average salary of USD 1,23,312 per year with over 5–6 years of experience. (Glassdoor)
SysOps Engineer
A SysOps engineer typically makes USD 88,210 annually and needs at least 4 to 5 years of expertise.
Cloud Architect
A cloud architect’s yearly base salary in the United States is USD 1, 36, 448. Even as a beginning, you will get handsome pay, and as you gain experience, your compensation will rise even further.
Cloud Software Developer
A cloud software developer earns USD 1,13,626 annually in pay. Experts in cloud computing are in high demand, and as they climb the corporate ladder, their salaries increase.
Cloud Security Engineer
A Cloud security engineer’s annual pay in the United States is USD 1,21,192. You can elevate your compensation with a minimum of five to six years of experience.
Cloud Network Engineer
A Cloud network engineer makes $114,130 a year in income. With years of expertise and a high-profile employment function, the predicted incomes are 10x to climb.
Cloud Automation Engineer
For the automation domain, the starting salary for a cloud engineer is USD 98,307, which is a high-paying salary for a new employee.
Cloud Administrator
The initial income of a lead cloud engineer is $1,31,194 annually. With experience, cloud administrators can expect a high pay scale for handling the administration of the databases.
Top 10 Cloud Engineer skills in 2023
As a cloud engineer, you must deal with numerous cross-functional teams that combine software, operations, and architecture. You must master many skills to leverage or amplify the cloud engineer domain options in your bag. To help streamline your profile, here are a few top skills for cloud engineers to follow in 2023.
1. Cloud service providers
Understanding various cloud service providers is a vital aspect of cloud engineering skills. You must know the inside out of at least one leading cloud service provider, be it AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure. And then study how they help deliver end-to-end user capabilities like database, computing, storage, ML, migration, etc. Every cloud platform has unique functionalities to support workloads and data migrations. It would help if you dived deeper into each cloud service provider to make the best use of those features and drive exceptional business results.
2. Storage
Cloud storage is another critical aspect of a cloud engineer’s responsibility. You would need to build various types of storage capabilities like:
- Personal cloud storage
- Hybrid cloud storage
- Public cloud storage
- Private cloud storage
Firms deal with unimaginable amounts of data daily, which needs utmost protection while being shared across network systems. You can lose critical info in the hands of an unethical hacker in a single breach. As a cloud engineer specializing in storage, you will help your business by providing greater accessibility, reliability, protection, data backup, archival, and disaster recovery.
For starters, you can check out S3, AWS Glacier, Data Lakes in Azure, etc., to begin your storage journey.
3. Networking
Advanced networking capabilities have encouraged organizations to push more network management features into the cloud thanks to improved internet access and WAN bandwidth. This has led to more customers demanding cloud networking functionalities, leading organizations to build and access network models using cloud-based solutions.
So, if you are a cloud engineer, networking is one of the crucial skill sets to master in 2023. You will help your team ensure that network systems are responsive to user demands and frame automatic adjustment methods.
4. Virtualization
Virtualization has made lives simpler by helping users reduce hardware assets or use them effectively. They can do so by operating numerous “virtual machines” simultaneously on the same hardware and simulating various IT system components.
Moreover, organizations may access scalable, fault-tolerant resources thanks primarily to virtualization. Therefore, working with virtualization or understanding services like VMs, EC2, and Lambda would be a significant step toward serverless computing, making it a highly-relevant cloud engineering skill.
5. Linux
Linux is a programmers’ nirvana as it brings innumerable features like open source, super easy customization, enhanced security, etc. Since cloud service providers are aware of this, Linux is increasingly being used on various platforms.
In fact, approx 30% of the servers that run Azure alone are Linux-based if we look at the total number of servers. Therefore, if you are a professional with expertise in architecting, developing, constructing, managing, and supporting Linux servers in cloud infrastructure, you can be the master of all trades and call it a day.
6. Security and disaster
Cloud security strives to protect cloud computing’s data, apps, and environments. It’s not different from on-prem architecture security. However, given that everything is migrating to the cloud, it’s crucial to be extremely careful while handling it. If you are excellent at:
- Keeping data and systems safe
- Track current levels of security
- Trace and respond to unexpected events
Interestingly, you may find myriad opportunities to expand in the disaster and recovery domains. They are a vital part of working in the cloud, and you will have lucrative jobs as organizations want their cloud engineers to come up with more than enough preventative measures.
7. Web Services and APIs
The fundamental structure of any architecture is crucial. Since Web services give developers ways to integrate web apps over the internet, cloud architectures have to rely mainly on APIs and Web Services. Open standards like XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI are used to tag and transport data, define services, and list them. Additionally, you need to use API to complete the necessary integration.
Therefore, having web development skills and relevant knowledge will give you a solid base to build cloud architectures.
8. DevOps
If you are a software or operations engineer, you are likely familiar with these professionals’ ongoing problems when operating in various situations. DevOps combines the Development and Operations methodologies into a single framework, reducing the overlap between the teams’ workloads.
Though you may think this skill is a little out of place, you must still focus on energy to master this skill. But the approach to development is a highly demanding role. For instance, AWS DevOps have excellent growth prospects since DevOps works exceptionally well with most Cloud Service Providers, particularly AWS.
9. Containers
Containers give you a logical packaging method and help you isolate apps from the environment where you run them. Apart from whether or not the target ecosystem has a private data center, public cloud, or even a developer’s laptop, this decoupling helps in the super easy implementation of container-based apps.
Therefore, knowing how well-known containers like Kubernetes and Docker function will add weight to your resume across industries, not just the cloud.
10. Programming skills
You must recognize the developers’ role in cloud computing when discussing cloud engineer abilities. Learning development makes you a pro in designing, deploying, and managing applications, which is further leveraged by cloud computing for scalability and strength. Therefore, it would be beneficial to master the proper programming languages or frameworks. The following list of popular programming languages and frameworks:
- SQL: helps in data manipulation and processing
- Python: to create, evaluate and organize extensive data with ease
- XML + Java: Widely used for data description
- .net: a framework designed explicitly for Azure Developers
- Combining these coding abilities could make you an invincible cloud engineer.
A few popular certifications to help you gain cloud engineer skills
If you are starting your career and don’t know where to start your journey with cloud engineer skills, then certifications are just the right skill path for you. All major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and other reputed IT organizations provide cert courses for various cloud engineer roles. Here’s a list of a few popular certifications that will help you begin with the skills of cloud engineers.
Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP)
Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) is a certification curated by cybersecurity professionals associated with ISC2. It’s one of the leading cyber and cloud security certs validating your ability to design, handle, and secure cloud data and infrastructure. To be eligible, you must have experience working in an IT firm.
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) is one of the most popular DevOps training programs that helps you build the skills to handle container orchestrations. The Linux Foundation and the CNCF work together to design and maintain it. This certification lends credibility and verifies your abilities to handle administrative tasks with Kubernetes.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional: DOP-C01
The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional or DOP-C01 exam demonstrates your technical proficiency in setting up, running, and maintaining distributed app systems on the AWS cloud. This helps you boost the platform’s self-assurance and credibility with coworkers, stakeholders, and clients. Companies with AWS-certified DevOps professionals may guarantee timely service of secure, compliant, highly available, and scalable systems. The exam asks for 2+ years of experience provisioning and running the AWS environment.
CompTIA Linux+ Certification: LPI LX0-103
The CompTIA Linux+ or LPI LX0-103 cert confirms the abilities administrators require to secure the business, administer the cloud, and maintain systems. The certification guarantees that IT specialists, software developers, cybersecurity engineers, and penetration testers possess these essential abilities to support today’s technological systems.
Microsoft Azure Networking: AZ-700
The Microsoft Azure Networking or AZ-700 certification provides the subject matter expertise to plan, implement, and monitor Azure networking solutions, including security, hybrid networking, private access, routing, and connectivity to Azure services. You will learn how to implement networking solutions through the Azure portal and other processes like PowerShell, ARM templates, and the Azure CLI.
Summary
Hope this blog helps you streamline your career as a cloud engineer and understand how cloud engineer skills will trend in 2023. Speaking of upskilling, certifications are the best and fastest way to get hands-on with cloud computing nuances and gain countless skills at your fingertips.
However, certifications demand authentic and updated resources and must help you cover each aspect of exam domains in detail. With this in mind, Whizlabs offers curated training programs and materials for popular cloud engineering cert courses. You will find practice papers, video lectures designed by industry experts, hands-on labs to put theory into practice, and sandboxes to experiment with and understand cloud platforms in a better way.
Wish to learn more about gaining cloud engineer skills? Or explore other certification courses? Explore Whizlabs!
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