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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Security Specialist

💰 $120,000 - $160,000

SecurityCloudDevSecOpsIT

🎯 Role Definition

The Cloud Security Specialist is an experienced security practitioner who designs, implements and operates security controls for public cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP). This role leads cloud-native threat modeling, IAM hardening, vulnerability and container security, infrastructure-as-code scanning, cloud incident response, and compliance automation. The specialist partners with platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, and application teams to embed security earlier in the software lifecycle using DevSecOps practices and cloud security tooling.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Cloud Engineer with security focus
  • Security Engineer or Information Security Analyst
  • DevOps / SRE professional transitioning into security

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cloud Security Architect
  • Principal Cloud Security Engineer
  • Head of Cloud Security / Director of Cloud Security
  • Security Engineering Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • DevSecOps Engineer
  • Cloud Platform Architect
  • Application Security Engineer
  • Incident Response / Threat Hunting Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, implement and maintain cloud-native security architectures across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, ensuring alignment with business risk and compliance requirements.
  • Define and enforce identity and access management (IAM) strategies, implementing least-privilege roles, cross-account access controls, and automated role governance workflows.
  • Lead cloud security assessments and threat modeling sessions for new platforms and major feature launches to identify architectural weaknesses and required mitigations.
  • Build and operate detection and response capabilities in the cloud using SIEM, EDR, cloud provider-native tools (e.g., AWS Security Hub, Azure Defender, GCP SCC) and custom telemetry pipelines.
  • Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security policies, configuration templates and automated scanning for Terraform, CloudFormation and ARM/Bicep artifacts.
  • Implement automated security gates in CI/CD pipelines to run static analysis, secret detection, SCA, container and IaC scanners, preventing insecure deployments to production.
  • Design and enforce container and orchestration security controls for Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE) including RBAC hardening, pod security policies, network policies and runtime threat protection.
  • Perform continuous vulnerability management for cloud workloads, containers and managed services, prioritizing remediation actions based on exposure and business impact.
  • Create and maintain cloud security runbooks and playbooks for incident response, escalation, containment and post-incident root cause analysis.
  • Lead investigations and remediation for cloud incidents and security events, collaborating with engineering, platform and incident response teams to restore secure operations.
  • Configure and maintain secure logging, monitoring and alerting pipelines using centralized logging platforms (Splunk, ELK, Datadog) and cloud-native logging services.
  • Implement encryption and key management practices including KMS/HSM integrations, envelope encryption, secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault).
  • Conduct continuous compliance automation for frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks, NIST SP 800-53, PCI-DSS and SOC 2, including policy-as-code and automated evidence collection.
  • Evaluate, select and operationalize cloud security tooling (CSPM, CWPP, CASB, WAF, DLP) and integrate those tools into platform provisioning and developer workflows.
  • Build and run security telemetry and threat analytics, including custom detection rules, anomaly detection, and threat intelligence integration for cloud workloads.
  • Partner with product and engineering teams to provide security design reviews, secure coding guidance and code-level remediation recommendations.
  • Implement network security architectures in cloud environments, including VPC/VNet segmentation, security groups, firewalls, private endpoints and transit architectures.
  • Automate remediation where appropriate using serverless functions, orchestration playbooks, and IaC updates to reduce mean time to remediate (MTTR).
  • Drive security-focused onboarding and enablement for developers and DevOps teams, creating training, reference architectures and secure templates to improve developer experience.
  • Maintain and evolve a cloud security roadmap aligned to organizational risk priorities and cloud adoption plans, reporting progress to security leadership and stakeholders.
  • Conduct penetration tests, red team exercises or coordinate third-party assessments focused on cloud infrastructure, application deployments and platform integrations.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of cloud provider features, threat landscape changes, and public advisories; proactively adapt controls and policies to emerging risks.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Document security architecture decisions, control rationales and trade-offs to support audits and compliance reviews.
  • Mentor junior security engineers and help grow cloud security expertise across the organization.
  • Maintain vendor relationships for cloud security tooling and manage proof-of-concept evaluations.
  • Provide subject-matter expertise for procurement and risk assessment of third-party cloud services.
  • Produce security metrics and dashboards to measure posture, risk and the effectiveness of security initiatives.
  • Assist legal and compliance teams with data residency, encryption and contractual security requirements for cloud deployments.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep hands-on experience with cloud platforms: AWS (IAM, VPC, KMS, CloudTrail), Azure (AD, VNets, Key Vault), and GCP (IAM, VPC, KMS).
  • Expertise in Identity and Access Management (IAM), single sign-on, federation, role-based access control and least-privilege design.
  • Proficient with Infrastructure as Code tooling: Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep and secure IaC patterns.
  • Container and orchestration security expertise: Kubernetes security best practices for EKS/AKS/GKE, runtime protection and image hardening.
  • Experience with cloud security tooling: CSPM (Prisma Cloud, Wiz, Dome9), CWPP, CASB and cloud provider security services (AWS Security Hub, Azure Defender, GCP SCC).
  • Vulnerability management and container/image scanning: experience with tools like Tenable, Nessus, Qualys, Clair, Trivy, Snyk.
  • Strong familiarity with CI/CD security integrations (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) and pipeline-based security gates.
  • Hands-on with logging, monitoring and SIEM platforms: Splunk, ELK/Elastic, Datadog, Chronicle and cloud-native logging solutions.
  • Knowledge of cryptography, key management, TLS, PKI and secure secret management solutions (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).
  • Experience building automated detection rules, alerting, and response playbooks for cloud-native telemetry.
  • Practical knowledge of network security in cloud contexts: security groups, NACLs, private endpoints, transit gateways and microsegmentation.
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks and automation for CIS Benchmarks, NIST, SOC2, ISO27001 and PCI-DSS.
  • Proficient in scripting and automation (Python, PowerShell, Bash) to build remediation workflows and operational tooling.
  • Knowledge of secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) practices and static/dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST).
  • Experience with penetration testing methodologies and coordinating third-party cloud security assessments.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communicator able to present technical cloud security concepts to engineers and executives.
  • Collaborative mindset: experience partnering cross-functionally with DevOps, product, compliance and operations.
  • Proactive problem-solver who prioritizes high-risk items and drives remediation to closure.
  • Continuous learner with curiosity for new cloud features, threats and security tooling.
  • Coaching and mentoring skills; comfortable enabling non-security teams to adopt secure practices.
  • Excellent organizational skills for managing multiple cloud security initiatives and projects.
  • Customer-focused with the ability to balance security controls and developer velocity.
  • Analytical thinker with strong investigative skills for incident triage and root-cause analysis.
  • Change agent who can build consensus and drive security adoption across distributed teams.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or related technical field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science or an advanced technical discipline; relevant professional certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Cybersecurity / Information Security
  • Computer Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Network Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of professional experience in cloud security, cloud engineering with security responsibilities, or security engineering roles supporting public cloud.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of hands-on cloud security experience across at least two major cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GCP).
  • Demonstrated experience implementing cloud security at scale, including automation of security controls, incident response and compliance evidence collection.
  • Relevant certifications a plus: CISSP, CCSP, AWS Certified Security – Specialty, Azure Security Engineer, GCP Professional Cloud Security Engineer, CISM, or pragmatic vendor certifications (HashiCorp, Kubernetes).
  • Experience participating in audits, regulatory programs and managing evidence for SOC2/PCI/NIST assessments.
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