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
Junior Cloud Engineer / Associate Cloud Engineer
1-2 yearsSkills to master
- Mastering core cloud services (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM), basic IaC (Terraform modules), understanding networking fundamentals, and getting comfortable with Linux/Windows administration in the cloud.
You're ready to move on when
- Consistently deploying resources accurately with minimal supervision.
- Successfully troubleshooting routine cloud infrastructure issues.
- Demonstrating a solid understanding of cloud security basics.
- Actively contributing to documentation and runbooks.
- 2
DevOps Engineer (Cloud Focus)
2-3 yearsSkills to master
- Deepening expertise in CI/CD pipelines, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), scripting for automation, and monitoring tools. Bridging the gap between development and operations.
You're ready to move on when
- Designing and implementing robust CI/CD pipelines for applications.
- Managing Kubernetes clusters and deploying containerised workloads.
- Automating complex operational tasks with Python or similar languages.
- Proactively identifying and resolving application performance bottlenecks related to infrastructure.
- 3
System Administrator / Infrastructure Engineer (On-Prem to Cloud)
3-4 years (with dedicated cloud upskilling)Skills to master
- Translating on-premises infrastructure knowledge (servers, networking, virtualisation) into cloud equivalents, learning IaC from scratch, and understanding cloud-native security models. This path requires a strong commitment to learning new paradigms.
You're ready to move on when
- Successfully migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud.
- Demonstrating proficiency in cloud-specific networking and security configurations.
- Building infrastructure from scratch using Terraform.
- Adapting traditional sysadmin problem-solving to a distributed cloud environment.