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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Solutions Consultant

💰 $ - $

CloudITConsultingSolutions Architecture

🎯 Role Definition

A Cloud Solutions Consultant designs and delivers scalable, secure cloud solutions for enterprise customers by combining deep cloud architecture knowledge (AWS, Azure, GCP) with hands-on implementation skills in IaC, containers, CI/CD and automation. This role partners with sales and engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical architectures, lead migrations and proofs-of-concept, optimize cost and performance, and provide ongoing technical advisement and enablement. The ideal candidate balances pre-sales consulting, technical delivery, and customer-facing communication to accelerate cloud adoption and measurable business outcomes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Cloud Engineer or Cloud Systems Administrator
  • Solutions Architect (entry-level) or DevOps Engineer
  • Technical Pre-Sales Engineer or IT Consultant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cloud Solutions Consultant / Lead Cloud Architect
  • Principal Solutions Architect or Cloud Practice Lead
  • Head of Cloud Engineering or Director of Cloud Services

Lateral Moves:

  • Technical Account Manager (TAM)
  • Cloud Product Manager
  • Cloud Security Architect

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design end-to-end cloud architectures (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) tailored to customer business goals, compliance requirements, and performance constraints across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
  • Lead technical pre-sales activities including discovery sessions, solution workshops, and detailed requirements analysis to convert business needs into executable cloud roadmaps and statements of work.
  • Create and deliver hands-on proofs-of-concept (PoCs) and pilot projects demonstrating cloud-native designs, containerized workloads, and automated deployment pipelines to accelerate customer buy-in.
  • Plan and execute lift-and-shift and replatforming migrations as well as cloud-native refactors, producing migration runbooks, cutover plans, rollback strategies, and risk mitigation plans.
  • Architect and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates, or equivalent to enforce repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure deployments.
  • Design and implement resilient, secure networking topologies (VPC/VNet design, transit gateways, VPN/Direct Connect/ExpressRoute) to enable hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity with consideration for latency, throughput, and security.
  • Develop CI/CD pipelines and automated release processes using Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, including automated testing, artifact management, and deployment promotion strategies.
  • Containerize workloads and design Kubernetes / EKS / AKS / GKE architectures, including cluster sizing, namespace strategy, service mesh and operational procedures for upgrades and scaling.
  • Define and implement authentication, authorization and identity management strategies (IAM roles, RBAC, SSO, OAuth, OIDC) with least-privilege principles and zero-trust patterns.
  • Implement logging, monitoring and observability solutions (CloudWatch, Stackdriver/Cloud Monitoring, Azure Monitor, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) to provide actionable metrics, alerts, and runbooks for operational teams.
  • Conduct cloud cost assessments, implement tagging and chargeback strategies, and recommend cost optimization measures (rightsizing, reserved instances, autoscaling, savings plans) to reduce TCO.
  • Ensure cloud solutions meet regulatory, data residency, and security compliance standards (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR) by designing controls, encryption schemes, and audit logging.
  • Produce high-quality architecture diagrams, solution briefs, technical proposals, and RFP responses that clearly communicate design decisions, trade-offs, and implementation steps.
  • Provide hands-on delivery and technical leadership during implementation phases, including pair-programming with customer engineers, mentoring internal teams, and performing architecture reviews.
  • Collaborate with product, engineering and operations teams to define SLAs, SLOs and incident response processes and to ensure smooth handoffs from delivery to run teams.
  • Lead root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews after outages or performance incidents, documenting corrective actions and updating runbooks and automation to prevent recurrence.
  • Integrate cloud platforms with on-premises systems and third-party SaaS products using secure APIs, data pipelines and messaging systems, ensuring data integrity and minimal disruption.
  • Drive adoption of DevSecOps practices by integrating security scanning, vulnerability management, and compliance checks into the software delivery lifecycle.
  • Evaluate emerging cloud services and vendors, run technical comparisons, and recommend solutions that align with long-term cloud strategy and platform standardization.
  • Build and deliver customer training, enablement materials, and technical workshops to upskill internal teams and clients on cloud best practices, IaC patterns and operational processes.
  • Lead vendor and partner engagements during solution delivery, managing relationships, coordinating third-party work, and ensuring contract and licensing alignment.
  • Contribute to the development of repeatable solution patterns, templates, and accelerators that shorten time-to-market and improve governance for future customer engagements.

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.
  • Maintain and update architecture and implementation documentation, runbooks and knowledge base articles for internal and customer use.
  • Assist sales teams in scoping, estimating and responding to RFPs and proposals with technical input and realistic delivery timelines.
  • Provide post-deployment support and escalation handling during customer stabilization and hypercare periods.
  • Participate in internal enablement, sharing lessons learned, best practices and reusable artifacts across consulting and delivery teams.
  • Monitor industry trends in cloud native technologies and provide input to the practice roadmap, tooling choices and hiring needs.
  • Help develop internal templates for security, compliance, and cost governance for use across client engagements.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep expertise in at least one public cloud provider (AWS, Azure or GCP) with hands-on experience designing and delivering production workloads.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) proficiency: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager or equivalent.
  • Containerization and orchestration experience: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE), Helm, and service mesh basics.
  • CI/CD and automation skills: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, and pipeline-as-code patterns.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, Bash, PowerShell or equivalent for orchestration and automation tasks.
  • Cloud networking: VPC/VNet design, subnets, routing, NAT, load balancers, VPN, Direct Connect / ExpressRoute and firewall configurations.
  • Cloud security and identity: IAM, RBAC, KMS, secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), and secure design patterns.
  • Observability and monitoring: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Stackdriver/Cloud Monitoring, Prometheus, Grafana, and centralized logging (ELK/EFK).
  • Databases and storage: RDS, Cloud SQL, Cosmos DB, DynamoDB, S3/Blob storage, backups and disaster recovery planning.
  • Cost management and governance: tagging strategies, cost allocation, AWS/Azure/GCP billing tools and cost optimization techniques.
  • Migration tools and patterns: AWS Migration Hub, Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Velero, rsync, and data replication strategies.
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks and security controls: PCI, HIPAA, SOC, GDPR, and experience implementing relevant technical controls.
  • Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud architectures and common integration patterns.

Soft Skills

  • Strong consultative selling and client-facing communication: able to present complex technical concepts clearly to executives and technical stakeholders.
  • Stakeholder management: align competing priorities across business, security and engineering teams.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking: diagnose complex system issues and propose pragmatic, risk-aware solutions.
  • Project and time management: manage multiple concurrent engagements, deadlines and deliverables.
  • Mentoring and team collaboration: coach engineers, elevate junior consultants and foster cross-functional teamwork.
  • Presenting and workshop facilitation: lead technical workshops, whiteboard sessions and executive briefings.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: quickly adopt new cloud services and iterate on solution patterns.
  • Attention to detail and documentation rigor: produce precise runbooks, architecture diagrams and technical proposals.
  • Negotiation and vendor coordination: work with third-party vendors to align technical and contractual expectations.
  • Customer empathy and service orientation: prioritize client outcomes, adoption and long-term success.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cloud Computing, Information Technology, or MBA with a technical focus.
  • Professional cloud certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect, Google Professional Cloud Architect) and DevOps/IaC certifications are highly desirable.

Relevant Fields of Study:

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

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3 - 8 years of relevant experience in cloud architecture, consulting, DevOps or systems engineering with demonstrated customer-facing consulting experience.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years delivering cloud solutions at scale, including hands-on migrations, IaC and Kubernetes deployments.
  • Proven track record in technical pre-sales, PoC delivery, and post-deployment enablement for enterprise customers.
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