Builds, secures and optimises workloads on AWS, Azure or GCP.
Entry
Intermediate
Coding
Medium
Key skills
Common progression
Career overview
The Cloud Engineer turns cloud services into a usable, governed platform: landing zones, networking, identity, automation with Terraform, migration of legacy workloads, and cost control. Cloud skills travel extremely well between employers, and the job is a common route toward platform engineering or cloud architecture.
Main responsibilities
- Provision and secure cloud resources
- Describe infrastructure as code and version it
- Track and optimise cloud spending
- Design infrastructure solutions from business needs
- Implement metrics, logs and tracing end to end
- Prepare and execute change requests in production
- Automate recurring tasks with scripts
- Build high availability and disaster recovery setups
- Keep technical documentation up to date
- Lead incident resolution and post-mortem analysis
Technical skills
Technologies
Education level
Education requirements vary depending on the company, country and experience. Professional experience, certifications and technical skills can sometimes compensate for formal education.
High School / Bac
Less common
Bac+2 (2-year degree)
Common entry point
Bac+3 (Bachelor)
Common entry point
Bac+5 (Master / Engineering)
Common entry point
Experience & coding level
Experience level
Coding level
Useful certifications
Certifications are never mandatory. They are one way among others to prove a skill.
- AWS Solutions Architect Associate
- AZ-104
- Terraform Associate
Where can this career take you?
Multiple paths are possible. Click a role to open its profile.
Direct progression
Possible branches
Common trajectories
Where can you go next?
Realistic next career moves, with compatibility and a transition roadmap for each.
Overlap: 47% · Difficulty: Easy
Skills to learn: Landing zones, Security, Kubernetes
View roadmapOverlap: 37% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: CI/CD pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes
View roadmapOverlap: 28% · Difficulty: Hard
Skills to learn: Observability & tracing, Kubernetes, SLO & error budgets
View roadmapOverlap: 34% · Difficulty: Hard
Skills to learn: Kubernetes, CI/CD at scale, Developer experience
View roadmapOverlap: 23% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: IAM, CSPM (Defender/Security Hub), Network security
View roadmapOverlap: 24% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: Hybrid connectivity, Routing, Security groups / NACL
View roadmapWhere can you go from here?
A typical progression built from real career relationships. Click any role to open its profile.
Soft skills
- Technical curiosity
- Rigour and attention to detail
- Big-picture thinking
- Problem solving
- Clear communication
- Autonomy
Common previous careers
Roles that frequently lead into this career.
Overlap: 46% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Containers
View roadmapOverlap: 0% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Cloud networking
View roadmapOverlap: 34% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Identity & access management
View roadmapOverlap: 24% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Identity & access management
View roadmapOverlap: 23% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Identity & access management
View roadmapOverlap: 61% · Difficulty: Medium
Skills to learn: Identity & access management, Containers, Cost optimisation
View roadmapRelated resources
Continue your career exploration
Keep moving: compare roles, follow a roadmap, read a guide or prepare for an interview.
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A documented transition from this role to the next.
Cloud EngineerSenior Cloud Engineer
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