Technological advancement has led to an increase in technology-related jobs across the globe. The fast-paced rise of the IT and communication industry makes building a career in this field ideal. One of the hottest trends in IT today is Cloud Computing. In 2021, it became the de facto choice of IT due to digital transformation shifts accelerated by remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. Cloud computing enables users to store and access data over the internet servers instead of the computer’s hard drive. Adopting cloud computing to enable digital transformation has become the order of the day for most companies. With each passing day, modern IT is moving more and more towards cloud-based solutions and having a solid background in how to manage them will be even more critical for IT professionals in the future.

The growing demand for public cloud services has seen cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud appeal to many organizations because of features such as pay-per-use, ability to scale up or down based on usage, self-service, and more. All these benefits lead to much lower costs, faster time-to-market and better service quality compared with traditional methods. The growth of this technology has created incredible demand for Cloud computing jobs, from Cloud developers and Cloud DevOps roles to more specialized roles such as solutions architects and Cloud security engineers. Regardless of the role, Cloud computing skills are in high demand and have the potential to impact almost every industry. Some of the roles that you can pursue within the field of cloud computing along with their required skillset include:

• Cloud Developer

Job Duties:

• Designing and developing secure, scalable cloud applications, and products.

• Assisting in developing automated tooling for deployment and maintenance.

• Defining and documenting best practices and strategies regarding application deployment and infrastructure maintenance.

Required Skills:

1. Programming Languages (e.g., Python)

2. Web Services & API

3. Networking, Storage, Compute, Security on Cloud

4. Deploying Software in Cloud

5. Web Development (i.e. HTML, CSS)

6. Virtualization & Containers

• Cloud DevOps Engineer

Job Duties:

• Building and scaling services in a cloud.

• Configuration management.

• Building automated systems/infrastructure, and develop pipelines to make remote updates to software eliminating any effort for users.

Required Skills:

1. Programming Language (i.e. Python)

2. Infrastructure as Code

3. CI/CD Tools (Jenkins)

4. Monitor Software & Infrastructure

5. Orchestration (i.e. Kubernetes)

6. Infrastructure Automation (i.e. Ansible)

• Cloud Solution Architect

Job Duties:

• Delivering solution architecture to engineering teams, communicating their value to ensure good implementation.

• Offering guidance in infrastructure movement techniques, such as bulk application transfers into the Cloud (lift or shift, or adopting cloud-native approach).

• Driving experiments to evaluate new technologies and methodologies to accelerate project delivery.

Required Skills:

1. OS Concepts (e.g. Linux)

2. Networking, Storage & Security Fundamentals

3. Application and Infrastructure Architecture & Design principles

4. Automation & Orchestration

5. IT Governance

Which Cloud service providers occupies the largest market share?

There are several popular cloud platforms; however, Amazon Web Services (AWS) leads the public cloud infrastructure by currently holding the highest market share and the largest number of data centers and services. AWS routinely adds new services and invests billions of dollars in the overall platform and infrastructure. AWS was the early leader in public cloud computing infrastructure as a service in 2008 (when it launched) and has never looked back. AWS has become everything from a key AI and machine learning platform to call center engine. Though Google Cloud Platform has far less market share than the top 2, job listings that mentioned Google Cloud skills increased 66% over the past year.

“When I started learning about Cloud, it was a very abstract thing for me; I wasn’t able to understand what the cloud is and why everyone is talking about the cloud. I was like a person without a face, but when I learned about AWS, I could co-relate various cloud concepts very quickly.”

So AWS is like putting a face on cloud, and that’s why I recommend it for anyone looking to start a career in Cloud Computing.