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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Solutions Engineer

💰 $110,000 - $160,000

CloudDevOpsEngineeringInfrastructure

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires an experienced Cloud Solutions Engineer to architect, build, and optimize cloud-native solutions that drive scale, reliability, security, and cost-efficiency. The ideal candidate combines strong cloud architecture experience (AWS/Azure/GCP), infrastructure-as-code proficiency (Terraform/ARM/Bicep/CloudFormation), container orchestration (Kubernetes/EKS/AKS/GKE), and a pragmatic DevOps mindset to accelerate product delivery while ensuring operational excellence.

Primary keywords: Cloud Solutions Engineer, cloud architecture, AWS, Azure, GCP, Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, cloud migration, cloud security, cost optimization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Cloud Engineer
  • DevOps Engineer / Platform Engineer
  • Systems Architect / Infrastructure Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cloud Architect / Cloud Engineering Lead
  • Principal Cloud Architect
  • Head of Cloud / Director of Cloud Infrastructure
  • Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps/Platform Engineering Manager
  • Security Cloud Engineer / Cloud Security Architect
  • Cloud Migration Consultant

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, architect, and implement highly available, secure, and cost-efficient cloud solutions across one or more public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), using best practices for networking, identity, storage, and compute.
  • Lead end-to-end cloud migration projects: assess on-premise workloads, develop migration strategies (rehost, refactor, replatform), execute migrations, and validate post-migration performance and security.
  • Translate product and business requirements into scalable cloud architectures and solution blueprints, producing detailed diagrams, technical specifications, and runbooks.
  • Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates, or Bicep to provision and manage cloud resources in a repeatable, auditable manner.
  • Design, implement, and operate container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE), managing deployment pipelines, autoscaling, and multi-cluster strategies.
  • Implement CI/CD pipelines and platform tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD) to enable automated build, test, and deployment processes for cloud-native applications.
  • Define and enforce cloud security and compliance controls: IAM policies, encryption at rest/in transit, key management, network segmentation, and vulnerability scanning.
  • Optimize cloud cost and resource utilization through rightsizing, reserved instances/savings plans, autoscaling policies, and monitoring ROI of architectural choices.
  • Build observability and monitoring solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, Stackdriver, Azure Monitor) to ensure end-to-end visibility, alerting, and SLA adherence.
  • Implement backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies, including RTO/RPO planning and periodic failover testing.
  • Collaborate with security, legal, and compliance teams to implement governance frameworks and adhere to standards (HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, GDPR) in cloud environments.
  • Create reusable platform components, reference architectures, and developer self-service patterns to standardize deployments and speed delivery.
  • Perform performance tuning and capacity planning for cloud services, databases, and application stacks to meet latency, throughput, and scalability goals.
  • Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams on cloud best practices, IaC patterns, and secure deployment strategies.
  • Lead incident response and post-incident root cause analyses for cloud outages, implement corrective actions, and share lessons learned.
  • Design and implement hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity solutions (VPN, Direct Connect, ExpressRoute), ensuring secure, reliable cross-environment communication.
  • Automate operational tasks through scripts, runbooks, and platform tools to reduce toil and improve mean time to recovery (MTTR).
  • Evaluate new cloud services and partner technologies, run proof-of-concepts, and recommend vendor/architecture choices aligned with business needs.
  • Partner with product and engineering teams to define SLOs/SLAs, implement health checks, and continuously improve service reliability.
  • Manage environment lifecycle and branching strategies for cloud environments (dev, staging, prod), ensuring reproducible and safe deployments.
  • Ensure data protection and governance in cloud data platforms (S3, Blob Storage, Cloud Storage), including lifecycle rules, access controls, and encryption standards.
  • Maintain documentation for architecture, deployment processes, runbooks, and onboarding materials to support operational handover and team scaling.
  • Drive automation of security scans, compliance checks, and infrastructure policy enforcement using tools like HashiCorp Sentinel, OPA/Rego, and cloud-native policy engines.

Secondary Functions

  • Support cross-functional teams during planning and execution of cloud initiatives, including cost modeling, risk assessments, and dependency mapping.
  • Assist in vendor evaluations, procurement support, and proof-of-concept activities for cloud-native services, managed databases, and observability platforms.
  • Provide hands-on support for escalated production issues, participate in on-call rotations, and contribute to continuous improvement of runbooks and playbooks.
  • Conduct workshops, brown-bags, and training sessions to upskill engineering teams on cloud patterns, IaC, and containerization best practices.
  • Contribute to the organization’s cloud governance, tagging standards, and resource naming conventions to facilitate billing, inventory, and security audits.
  • Run performance benchmarks and scale tests to validate new architectures and feature rollouts before production release.
  • Support ad-hoc architectural reviews and provide recommendations to improve maintainability, security posture, and developer experience.
  • Assist in the creation of cost dashboards and regular reporting to leadership on cloud spend trends and optimization opportunities.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to ensure cloud platform work is prioritized and aligned with product roadmaps.
  • Evaluate and onboard third-party SaaS or managed services when they provide faster time-to-value than building in-house solutions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expertise designing and operating cloud architectures in AWS, Azure, and/or GCP, with demonstrable production deployments and architecture diagrams.
  • Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates, Bicep) and modular, version-controlled IaC patterns.
  • Proficiency with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE) including helm charts and GitOps workflows.
  • Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, ArgoCD).
  • Deep understanding of cloud networking (VPCs/Subnets, route tables, VPN/Direct Connect/ExpressRoute, Transit Gateway) and secure network design.
  • Knowledge of cloud security best practices: IAM, KMS/CMK, encryption standards, secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).
  • Experience with automated monitoring, logging, and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, CloudWatch, Stackdriver, Azure Monitor).
  • Database and storage experience across cloud-managed services (RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL, Cosmos DB, DynamoDB, S3, Blob Storage).
  • Familiarity with serverless and event-driven architectures (Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Functions, EventBridge).
  • Cost optimization and cloud financial governance skills: tagging, budgets, forecasting, savings plans and RI management.
  • Automation and scripting skills (Python, Bash, Go) for tooling, CLI automation, and integration tasks.
  • Experience implementing disaster recovery, backup solutions, and high-availability architectures.
  • Knowledge of compliance and regulatory frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR) as applied to cloud environments.
  • Experience with policy-as-code and governance tools (OPA/Rego, HashiCorp Sentinel, AWS Config, Azure Policy).
  • Familiarity with identity federation, SSO, and directory services (Okta, Azure AD, IAM Federation).

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication skills: explain complex cloud concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders with clarity.
  • Collaborative mindset: partner effectively with product managers, developers, security, and operations teams.
  • Problem-solving orientation: quickly triage incidents and apply structured root cause analysis.
  • Leadership and mentorship: coach engineers on cloud best practices and lead by example during migrations and incidents.
  • Customer-centric approach: drive design decisions that align technical tradeoffs with business outcomes.
  • Time management and prioritization: balance platform work, project delivery, and reactive incident response.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: stay current with rapidly evolving cloud services and share knowledge across teams.
  • Documentation discipline: produce clear runbooks, architecture diagrams, and onboarding materials.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in CS/Engineering or specialized cloud computing certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Cloud Computing / Distributed Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, or systems engineering roles.

Preferred: 5+ years building production cloud architectures and 2+ years designing IaC-driven platforms; demonstrated experience leading migrations, multi-account/multi-tenant environments, or operating Kubernetes at scale.

Recommended certifications (highly preferred): AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate/Professional), Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate.

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