The pathway
How you actually get there, here
How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.
- 1
Associate Cloud Engineer (L1)
1-2 yearsSkills to master
- Mastering basic cloud service deployments, understanding security fundamentals, and becoming proficient with a single IaC tool.
You're ready to move on when
- Consistently successful IaC deployments for routine tasks.
- Ability to troubleshoot common cloud issues independently.
- Strong grasp of cloud security best practices (e.g., IAM, network ACLs).
- Proactive in learning new cloud services and contributing to team knowledge.
- 2
Systems Administrator / DevOps Engineer (On-Prem to Cloud)
2-3 years (with focused cloud learning)Skills to master
- Translating on-prem infrastructure knowledge to cloud equivalents, learning IaC, and gaining proficiency in at least one major cloud provider.
You're ready to move on when
- Successful migration of at least one significant on-prem workload to the cloud.
- Proficiency in IaC for provisioning cloud resources.
- Understanding of cloud networking and security models.
- Demonstrated ability to adapt existing operational practices to a cloud-native paradigm.
- 3
Software Developer (Cloud-focused)
2-4 years (with infrastructure focus)Skills to master
- Shifting from application-level code to infrastructure code, understanding cloud platform services deeply, and learning operational best practices.
You're ready to move on when
- Experience deploying and operating applications on cloud platforms.
- Strong understanding of cloud-native development patterns (e.g., serverless, containers).
- Ability to write and maintain IaC for application dependencies.
- Demonstrated interest in the underlying infrastructure that supports applications.