Don't know what's a Cloud Engineer? Architect? Understand these 4 common job titles in the cloud space!

The cloud is a very broad segment of the technology industry; no one environment is the same, and there are many different strategies for how companies manage their cloud.

Because of the large and diverse roles that need to be filled, sub-specialties within the cloud space have been created to address particular companies' needs.

Certain roles emphasize different skill-sets or philosophies to accomplish different goals.

A cloud team for any given company may have unique concerns and use-cases that need consideration, such as:

• Company size
• Team size
• Budget size
• Size of user-base
• Compliance requirements
• Pre-existing environments

Let's dive deep into different roles within the cloud industry and the goals that each job is trying to accomplish!

Cloud Support Engineer

Any company with a functioning IT department always has a section of users that are not technical, yet run into issues using certain technologies that are required to get their work done.

Because of this, there is always some sort of customer support provided by a given company.

These would be customer-facing roles; this is usually in a job title such as "Help Desk Technician" or "Technical Support Specialist".

These roles usually involve maintenance, training, and support to end-users for any hardware, software, and computer systems in use by the company.

The technician usually offers assistance over the phone, through email, and occasionally in person.

However, the expected level of the technical depth of troubleshooting for this level of work is usually limited to superficial problems; any issues beyond the job scope are escalated to the engineering team.

Certain medium-to-large-sized organizations may have a particular IT environment where the same level of support is required, but all issues are within the context of a "cloud environment".

Therefore, a "Cloud Support Engineer" role can be considered "tier one" technical support, which involves dealing with basic issues in a cloud environment.

Cloud Engineer

Any issues in a cloud environment that surpass the job scope of a Cloud Support Engineer would be addressed by a 'Cloud Engineer'.

Cloud Engineers are responsible for the constant upkeep of currently existing cloud infrastructure that is already in place.

This role is considered very hands-on and involved directly with the different cloud systems, infrastructure, and services that make up a given company's IT environment.

Usually, a company's engineering team has a specific goal and technical requirement in mind; the Cloud Engineers would be responsible for overseeing the production environment and ensuring that all needs of managing the cloud are all met.

Any performance, networking, data, etc. issues would be documented and repaired in real-time by the Cloud Engineer team.

They can be considered the operating and implementing party of a cloud solution, not concerned so much with the "business" requirements of the cloud but instead the "technical" requirements.

Cloud Architect

Cloud Engineers are responsible for the actual repair and day-to-day maintenance of different cloud systems.

However, the job of designing, optimizing implementing a solution using the cloud to solve a business problem falls upon the "Cloud Architect" team.

Bigger picture concerns, such as how scalable?a system's infrastructure is to accommodate growth, reducing cost, planning migrations, etc. would fall on the Cloud Architect team.

If the company or a customer has a particular need, the Cloud Architect would not be in charge of the actual implementation, but instead be in charge of the planning, defining, and design of the environment that solves the client's needs.

If cloud computing is like rally racing, the Cloud Architect would be considered the "navigator", whereas the Cloud Engineer would be considered the "driver".

DevOps Engineer

Whether working primarily in the cloud or not, there are different engineering teams within tech that are responsible for different roles.

However, when deploying any application, two different engineering teams are always required:

• Development?- engineers responsible for maintaining application code
• Operations?- engineers responsible for maintaining IT infrastructure to run applications

Although both teams "need" each other to do their respective jobs, their goals are inherently opposed to each other:

• Development - engineers emphasize delivering brand-new changes; the focus is on delivering as many code updates as possible
• Operations - engineers emphasize maintaining system stability; the focus is keeping the infrastructure running and bug-free

The "DevOps Engineer" role emerged as a result of the need to increase agility and collaboration between these two teams, helping both teams achieve their goals.

Automation, along with working knowledge of both the Operations and the Development team's tech stack is used to drive a culture shift towards breaking team silos.

The "DevOps Lifecycle" is used to provide a medium of close cooperation and communication to ensure that both teams' goals are achieved.

These are a few areas we can help you propel to in your Cloud career!

Let's get on board for taking that step in 2022.

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Written by Christian Talavera