Main Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Engineer
A Cloud Engineer is responsible for designing and building infrastructure to enable cloud applications. They monitor the performance and availability of deployed infrastructure and resolve issues when they arise. In this blog post we describe the primary responsibilities and the most in-demand hard and soft skills for Cloud Engineers.
Get market insights and compare skills for other jobs here.
Main Responsibilities of Cloud Engineer
The following list describes the typical responsibilities of a Cloud Engineer:
Absorb
Absorb and implement new technical cloud solutions.
Adopt
Adopt best practices for code creation, including test cases and error handling.
Advise
Advise, counsel, and educate executive and management teams on their relative importance.
Analyze
Analyze technical requirements in area of expertise and inputs to proposed solutions.
Apply
Apply periodic updates, patches, etc to servers.
Apply solid software design skills to develop micro services for backend web systems.
Architect
Architect and author integration and functional tests to qualify code for production deployment.
Assess
Assess emerging technologies, making requirement-based recommendations.
Assist
Assist cloud operational and run support as needed.
Author
Author or contribute to GSK Internet cloud publications such as whitepapers, tutorials, etc..
Automate
Automate application build and deployment pipelines.
Automate for efficiency and reliability and utilize CI / CD tooling as appropriate.
Build
Build and codes moderately complex software.
Build and maintain an IaC codebase using tools such as Terraform, Puppet and Ansible.
Build and maintains complex system architectures.
Build API and protect them using oAuth mechanism.
Build effective relationships with internal / external stakeholders.
Build internal tools to demonstrate performance and operational efficiency.
Build, Modify and improve Client Experience Center demo environment.
Builds
Build, code, test, and maintain high quality software.
Challenge
Challenge your peers and leadership over software correctness and best practices.Collaborate with
Collaborate with and mentor junior cloud engineers.
Collaborate with customers and functional experts to understand technical requirements.
Collaborate with enterprise architecture and solution delivery on cloud solutions.
Collaborate with IT teams on technical roadmap planning, development and implementation.
Conduct
Conduct client stakeholder interviews for sponsored podcasts and video products.
Conduct necessary analysis, design and prepare technical documentation.
Contribute to
Contribute to evolution of enterprise cloud based environments.
Contribute to the growing practice around Cloud, Devops and Infrastructure as Code.
Coordinate
Coordinate requirements and standards with Products and Tooling teams.
Create
Create and maintain Terraform deploy scripts.
Create, improve, and fully automate CI / CD development cycles.
Create standards, templates, and workflows around cloud usage for publication to the firm.
Deploy
Deploy and provide ongoing support of cloud storage and back-up.
Design
Design and build infrastructure to enable cloud applications.
Design and conduct unit level tests and contribute to System Level verification.
Design and implement Azure Automation, ARM Templates, DevOps, CICD, Infra as Code for all resources.
Design and migrate applications uses to the cloud.
Design highly available and resilient cloud architectures using proven frameworks and tools.
Design infrastructure for 24x7 cloud operations in Azure.
Develop
Develop A / B testing and session-aware traffic management machinery.
Develop and manage CI / CD solutions.
Develop and update technical documentation to support day-to-day operations (e.g. SOP's).
Develop applications that leverage cutting edge cloud.
Develop automation and infrastructure as code to improve operational consistency and efficiency.
Develop infrastructure-as-code for AWS & Azure services.
Develop lifecycle strategy for assets within the global virtual compute infrastructure.
Develop, maintain, and produce service / support reports and documents as required.
Develop robust solutions to manage our data, APIs and other critical back-end features.
Develop system infrastructure testing procedures, programming, and documentation.
Document
Document application configurations.
Document the design, operation and troubleshooting of technology platforms and procedures.
Document the processes and infrastructure on our internal wiki.
Engage
Engage directly with customers to tailor scalable solutions meeting their current and future needs.
Ensure
Ensure all protocols are observed and followed for the prescribed technical processes.
Ensure all team members adhere to best practices.
Ensure connectivity is established between the facility and the NOC.
Ensure security activities (Patch Management, vulnerabilities mgt, rights & access mgt..).
Ensure systems and processes are standardized.
Ensure systems reliability by verifying deployments through monitoring and automated testing.
Ensure there are no single points of failure for core systems and services.
Evaluate
Evaluate new cloud technologies and makes substantiated recommendations for improvement.
Evolve
Evolve the product portfolio in order to maximize impact on Indeed.
Facilitate
Facilitate schedule and cost forecasting and mentor developers in finding risk based provisions.
Guide
Guide and influence leaders throughout Indeed to adopt new technologies and techniques.
Help
Help translate product vision and requirements into software design.
Identify
Identify and reduce manual toil through automation, standards, and agile process.
Identify features that are relevant to the platform and act as product owner for the solutions.
Identify new tools and processes to improve the cloud platform and automate processes.
Identify risks and issues, and proposes solutions to remove barriers.
Implement
Implement a secure, robust and high availability DevOps pipeline.
Implement Cloud Environments for new and current customers.
Implement core REST + JSON based APIs.
Implement full DevOps culture of Build, Test automation with continuous integration and deployment.
Improve
Improve and standardize the way we log and monitor across services.
Improve how we approach security (secrets, keys, passwords).
Improve our logging, metrics, tracing, alerting & notifications infrastructure (GCP).
Improve system performance and reliability continuously.
Initiate
Initiate repair and installation requests with external service providers.
Input
Input into the future direction of our infrastructure.
Install
Install and configure servers in co-located and managed hosting facilities.
Install and configure Windows and / or Linux OS.
Interact with
Interact skillfully with business stakeholders and third-party technical organizations.
Investigate
Investigate root cause of severe and systemic outages, identify corrective actions.
Issue
Issue Support tickets and Incident management.
Lead
Lead architect for engineering services within AWS & Azure.
Lead by example with immaculate grooming, inspiring your team to always reflect their makeup look.
Lead plan creation for new business opportunities.
Lead the cloud engineering group and deliver cloud-based infrastructure for our business vertices.
Liaise with
Liaise and work with third parties and vendors.
Maintain
Maintain and assess security for Enterprise multi-cloud platform (IaaS and PaaS).
Maintain and improve our existing CI / CD Terraform pipelines.
Maintain IaC (Bug fix and evolution of Terraform scripts and modules).
Maintain security, backup, and redundancy strategies.
Make
Make, recommend, or justify critical technical decisions in product design.
Manage
Manage and coordinate support incidents with external vendors.
Manage and maintain existing use cases leveraging PaaS services.
Manage and maintain the document library for existing solutions and regularly update with new ones.
Manage and tracks the build processes.
Manage incidents, change request and problem management, performing root cause analysis as needed.
Manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
Manage operational and security issues to resolution using Jira work management system.
Manage technical change and release management strategy.
Manage the security, performance, availability and devops.
Measure
Measure and communicate performance metrics for Infrastructure Services.
Meet
Meet or exceed test coverage goals set for the project through creation of unit and functional tests.
Migrate
Migrate complex, multi-tier applications on Cloud Platforms.
Monitor
Monitor expenses against budgets, analyzing variances and taking corrective action.
Monitor software and systems to detect issues before they impact business operations.
Monitor the performance and availability of deployed infrastructure.
Oversee
Oversee and develop a distributed team of DevOps, platform, and operations engineers within Canada.
Oversee pre-production acceptance testing to ensure the high quality.
Own
Own the availability, resilience and scalability of your solutions.
Participate
Participate and lead implementation efforts.
Participate in Agile sprints and ceremonies.
Participate in an Agile squad (scrum team).
Participate in client value stream mapping sessions to identify continuous improvements.
Participate in day-to-day infrastructure operations, technical guidance and support.
Participate in incident response and improving the associated processes and tooling.
Participate in planning and retrospective sessions.
Perform
Perform lead role in reviewing vendor proposals and making recommendations.
Perform unit and quality assurance testing.
Plan
Plan, design, develop, and test software systems or applications.
Prepare
Prepare user documentation or provide inputs for creating user documentation as required.
Produce
Produce reproducible, testable and monitor-able infrastructure.
Promote
Promote and develop cost savings plans through automation and design enhancements.
Provide
Provide a customer first focus.
Provide continuous feedback to Product, Engineering, Security and Cloud Operations teams.
Provide documentation and training to other Engineering stakeholders.
Provide recommendation around technology evolution.
Provide strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills to resolve issues on all tiers.
Provide technical guidance on solid DevOps practices.
Provide technical or business guidance to clients within and outside your own department.
Provide third-level support for any problems based on the appropriate support model.
Provide training and support to other business and information systems staff members as required.
Recommend
Recommend architectural standards for complex infrastructure based on standards.
Research
Research and integrate third-party tools into the cloud platform to support business needs.
Research and maintain up-to-date knowledge of current technology trends and best practices.
Research, test, and implement new systems and technologies.
Resolve
Resolve alerts and perform remediation activities.
Resolve issues when they arise.
Resolve real world issues and participate in periodic on call assignments.
Run
Run experimental PoCs around Data Streaming technologies.
See
See the whole picture and cares about the details and client delight.
Share
Share an on-call rotation and be an escalation contact for service incidents.
Solve
Solve complex technical issues involving multiple technology stacks.
Stay current on
Stay current on best practices as well as other emerging technologies.
Stay current with industry trends, making recommendations as needed to help the company excel.
Stay up to date with current trends of cloud technology to ensure maximum performance.
Streamline
Streamline processes and brings consistency to tools across teams.
Support
Support and mentor engineers in onboarding and management of their applications.
Support high profile customers to migrate their applications to cloud platform.
Support InfoSec scans and compliance audits.
Support the implementation of a data classification.
Take
Take a peek into Adobe life in this video.
Track
Track and monitor project costs and deadlines.
Understand
Understand key networking fundamentals.
Understand the underlying data and flow of data.
Undertake
Undertake special projects or assignments as required.
Update
Update the enterprise wide cloud engineering framework, pest practices and patterns.
Use
Use considerable judgment to define solution and seeks guidance on complex problems.
Use of build and deploy tools Maven, Make and Puppet.
Utilize
Utilize software-based system maintenance and tracking tools.
Work with
Work alongside a multidisciplinary team (Architect, Lead, Developer, IT...).
Work closely with AWS / Azure set up.
Work closely with IT security to monitor the company's cloud privacy.
Work closely with the cloud services teams to deploy, troubleshoot and optimize cloud solutions.
Work collaboratively and effectively in virtual teams across locations and organizational boundaries.
Work cooperatively as a member of a team under the direction of the project team leader or manager.
Work in Agile teams, participate in Agile process in a collaborative fashion.
Work in a globally distributed team to deliver innovative and robust cloud solutions.
Work independently and as part of a team.
Work on Docker and Kubernetes.
Work on global client projects that are transforming every part of their digital customer journeys.
Work on our Openstack and Kubernetes deployments and its continuous improvement.
Work on truly interesting client projects with globally recognized companies.
Work under deadlines and subject to heavy project load.
Work with business users to define requirements and interfaces.
Work with cross functional teams to translate business requirements into technology solutions.
Work with Data Science team to architect their solutions following best practices.
Write
Write architectural documents for clients or teams as needed.
Write clear, readable and maintainable code, takes ownership of the quality and usability of code.
Write tutorials, how-to videos, and other technical articles for system support.
Most In-demand Hard Skills
The following list describes the most required technical skills of a Cloud Engineer:
Java
Cloud
Linux
Jenkins
Powershell
GCP
Chef
Devops
Security
Networking
Bash
Puppet
GIT
Cloudformation
Ruby
Design
SQL
GO
Most In-demand Soft Skills
The following list describes the most required soft skills of a Cloud Engineer:
Written and oral communication skills
Problem-solving attitude
Analytical ability
Interpersonal skills
Organizational capacity
Attention to detail
Leadership
Collaborative
Team player
Self-motivated
Presentation
Proactive
Troubleshooting skills
Work independently with little direction
Critical thinker
Positive attitude
Creative
Time-management
Enthusiastic
Self-starter
