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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Migration Specialist

💰 $ - $

CloudMigrationDevOpsArchitectureIT

🎯 Role Definition

A Cloud Migration Specialist is responsible for planning, executing, and validating the migration of applications, data, and infrastructure from on-premises and legacy systems to public or hybrid cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP). This role combines cloud architecture, migration strategy, cost optimization, security, and hands-on implementation—delivering repeatable, low-risk migration patterns (lift-and-shift, replatform, refactor) and enabling the organization to realize cloud-native benefits such as scalability, reliability, and lower TCO. The ideal candidate demonstrates expertise in cloud migration tooling (Terraform, CloudFormation, Azure ARM, Google Deployment Manager), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD automation, network and identity design, and data migration techniques (DB migration services, ETL, bulk transfer).

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Systems Engineer or Infrastructure Engineer transitioning from on-prem to cloud operations.
  • DevOps Engineer with proven experience in automation, IaC, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Cloud Engineer or Cloud Operations Analyst with hands-on migration or modernization experience.

Advancement To:

  • Cloud Architect / Principal Cloud Architect
  • Director of Cloud Platforms or Head of Cloud Delivery
  • Principal DevOps Engineer / Cloud Engineering Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) focused on cloud operations and reliability
  • Cloud Security Engineer or Cloud Compliance Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end cloud migration engagements by conducting discovery workshops, application and infrastructure inventory, dependency mapping, and readiness assessments to build a prioritized migration roadmap and migration waves aligned with business goals and ROI.
  • Design migration strategies (lift-and-shift, replatform, refactor, rearchitect) for monolithic and distributed applications, providing cost-benefit analysis and migration risk assessments that guide C-level and engineering stakeholders on target operating models.
  • Define target cloud architecture patterns across AWS/Azure/GCP, including VPC/VNet design, subnetting, routing, and transit architectures to ensure secure, performant, and multi-region deployments with high availability and disaster recovery considerations.
  • Develop Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates and modules using Terraform, CloudFormation, or Azure ARM to provision repeatable, auditable environments and enable automated, consistent deployments across dev/test/prod stages.
  • Lead the implementation of automated CI/CD pipelines to accelerate application delivery during and after migration, integrating tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps and ensuring rollback and blue/green or canary deployment patterns where needed.
  • Execute database and data migration plans using tools like AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, Google Database Migration Service, native export/import, or secure bulk transfer solutions, while minimizing downtime and ensuring data integrity and validation.
  • Implement containerization and orchestration strategies (Docker, Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE) where appropriate to modernize application deployment models and reduce operational overhead in the cloud.
  • Coordinate network cutovers, VPN, Direct Connect/ExpressRoute, DNS migration, and firewall/security group changes with networking teams to ensure minimal disruption and consistent access controls between on-prem and cloud environments.
  • Build and validate runbooks, playbooks, rollback plans, and migration run schedules; lead cutover windows, execute migration tasks, and perform post-migration verification and performance tuning to meet SLOs.
  • Perform application performance profiling and right-sizing of cloud compute, storage, and database resources to optimize ongoing cloud spend; implement tagging, cost allocation, and cost governance practices to track TCO and ROI for each migration wave.
  • Implement and validate identity, authentication, and authorization models in cloud environments (IAM, Azure AD, Google IAM), including least-privilege policies, role design, cross-account/tenant access patterns, and secrets management.
  • Establish monitoring, logging, and observability for migrated workloads using cloud-native tools (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Stackdriver/Cloud Operations) and/or third-party APM/logging platforms to ensure operational readiness and SLA adherence.
  • Conduct security assessments and remediation activities as part of the migration lifecycle, including vulnerability scanning, encryption of data at rest and in transit, compliance mapping (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2), and integration of cloud-native security controls and SIEM.
  • Partner with application owners, database administrators, and business stakeholders to validate functionality, test integrations, and manage change communications, ensuring user acceptance testing (UAT) and business continuity throughout migration.
  • Create, maintain, and present migration status reports, risk registers, and KPIs to engineering leadership and business stakeholders, driving transparency and data-driven decisions during large-scale transformation programs.
  • Mentor and enable internal engineering teams on cloud best practices, IaC patterns, cost optimization techniques, and operational runbooks to accelerate on-going cloud adoption beyond initial migrations.
  • Evaluate and select third-party migration tooling and managed services when appropriate (e.g., professional services, specialized data transfer appliances) and manage vendor relationships and contracts for migration projects.
  • Script and automate repetitive migration tasks (data validation, remediation, configuration drift detection) using Python, Bash, PowerShell, or cloud SDKs to reduce manual errors and speed up wave throughput.
  • Lead proof-of-concept (PoC) and pilot migrations to validate architectures, identify hidden dependencies, and refine migration playbooks and templates for scaled execution.
  • Maintain an up-to-date migration knowledge base, runbook library, and checklist repository that captures lessons learned, post-mortem remediation actions, and process improvements for future waves.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc cloud-related requests and exploratory analysis such as TCO modeling, performance benchmarking, and technical debt assessment to inform prioritization of migration candidates.
  • Contribute to the organization's cloud strategy and roadmap by identifying modernization opportunities and recommending target state patterns for cloud native, serverless, and platform services.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate migration and modernization needs into engineering requirements, non-functional requirements (NFRs), and acceptance criteria.
  • Participate in sprint planning, agile ceremonies, and cross-functional migration sprints to ensure migration tasks are scoped, estimable, and tracked within delivery frameworks.
  • Assist in building governance guardrails including policy-as-code, landing zone configurations, and organizational unit structures to enforce compliance and accelerate secure cloud adoption.
  • Help the security and compliance teams perform evidence collection and documentation for audits following migration activities, including change logs, access reviews, and encryption key management records.
  • Provide training sessions and enablement materials for operations and application teams on how to operate and troubleshoot workloads in the cloud post-migration.
  • Manage non-production migrations and environment cloning to support testing, performance runs, and disaster recovery validation without impacting production SLAs.
  • Review and improve backup, snapshot, and restore procedures for migrated assets and coordinate with DR teams to update RTO/RPO expectations and runbooks.
  • Track migration metrics such as time-to-migrate, incidents per migration wave, downtime minutes, and cost delta to continuously refine migration playbooks and deliver measurable improvements.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience with public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) including services for compute, storage, networking, serverless, and managed databases.
  • Migration Tools & Services: Proficiency with AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, Google Cloud Migrate, CloudEndure, Velostrata or similar migration tooling and bulk data transfer solutions.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Strong experience authoring reusable modules and state management with Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure ARM or similar.
  • Containerization & Orchestration: Practical knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE), Helm charts, and container lifecycle management in production.
  • CI/CD & Automation: Experience building automated pipelines and deployment strategies with Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent.
  • Scripting & Programming: Proficient in scripting languages for automation and validation (Python, Bash, PowerShell) and familiarity with cloud SDKs and APIs.
  • Networking & Hybrid Connectivity: Deep understanding of VPC/VNet design, routing, security groups, VPN, Direct Connect / ExpressRoute / Interconnect, and DNS migration strategies.
  • Identity & Access Management: Expertise in cloud IAM design, RBAC, federation, single sign-on (SSO), and secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, HashiCorp Vault).
  • Data Migration & Databases: Experience migrating relational and NoSQL databases (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB), data validation, ETL patterns, and data consistency strategies.
  • Security & Compliance: Knowledge of cloud security best practices, encryption, key management, vulnerability management, and compliance frameworks (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR).
  • Observability & Monitoring: Implementing monitoring, logging, tracing and alerting solutions using CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations, Prometheus/Grafana, or Splunk.
  • Cost Optimization & Governance: Ability to implement tagging strategies, cost allocation, rightsizing, reserved instances/savings plans, and governance guardrails to control cloud spend.
  • Disaster Recovery & High Availability: Design and validation of cross-region DR, backup/restore processes, and HA architectures to meet RPO/RTO.
  • Load Balancing & Application Delivery: Experience with cloud-native load balancers, application gateways, CDN integration, and performance tuning.
  • Migration Planning & Assessment Tools: Skilled at using discovery and dependency-mapping tools (agent-based or agentless) to create accurate migration plans and prioritized waves.

Soft Skills

  • Project leadership with the ability to manage cross-functional stakeholders and drive migration deliverables on schedule.
  • Strong communication and presentation skills for conveying technical tradeoffs and migration status to executives and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Analytical problem-solving and troubleshooting mindset to address complex integration, performance, and data integrity issues during migration.
  • Collaboration and team enablement—mentor engineers and share best practices to scale cloud adoption.
  • Adaptability and resilience when managing cutovers, rollback scenarios, and evolving requirements.
  • Attention to detail and documentation discipline to maintain runbooks, migration checklists, and compliance artifacts.
  • Customer-centric approach: prioritize business continuity, minimal downtime, and measurable business outcomes during migration.
  • Continuous learning orientation to stay current with rapidly evolving cloud services, migration patterns, and security controls.
  • Negotiation and vendor management skills when procuring migration tools or managed services.
  • Time management and multitasking across concurrent migration waves and production support activities.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cloud Computing, IT Management, Computer Science, or related disciplines.
  • Relevant cloud certifications (recommended): AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Cloud Computing
  • Network Engineering
  • Software Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years of IT experience with at least 2–4 years focused on cloud migrations, cloud architecture, or DevOps in production environments.

Preferred:

  • Proven track record delivering end-to-end cloud migration projects at scale (several applications or enterprise workloads).
  • Hands-on experience across at least one major cloud provider (AWS/Azure/GCP) and familiarity with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud deployments.
  • Experience working in Agile delivery teams and leading migration waves in a program or portfolio context.
  • Demonstrated success implementing IaC, CI/CD automation, containerization, and cost-governance practices.
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