Hiring! Cloud architects, engineers. Here is how you can start your career

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The coronavirus outbreak has pushed up the demand for cloud experts as businesses look to ensure continuity amid restrictions on the movement of people and travel.

With work from home a necessity, businesses are investing in digital platforms to ensure a smooth transition from office space to remote working.

It translates into a huge demand for cloud service providers and, in turn, of people skilled in cloud platforms.

C Sunil, specialised staffing, Teamlease Services, said the demand for talents in the cloud space has increased 25 percent in the last three months.

The demand would continue to rise as migration to cloud will only accelerate, he added.

There are three popular major cloud platforms -- Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

The best way to start with is the fundamentals and associate level certifications each of the major cloud platform offers. These require either zero or minimal experience after which one can opt for expert and specialised certifications.

Those with 0-5 years of experience, can get roles such as cloud administrator, developer, operational engineer and security implementation across platforms, said Nirmallya Mukherjee, who is Academic Director–Cloud Computing at Great Learning, an online learning platform.

“With 5-12 years of experience, one can be a cloud architect, consultant or a strategist,” he said.

These professionals are typically expert and specialised certified professionals and are required to implement cloud architecture, ensure security and privacy of data stored in cloud.

It can cost anywhere between Rs 7,500 and Rs 25,000 to get a cloud certificate, depending on the level of expertise being sought.

The role that are in demand right now are cloud architects, as enterprises migrate to cloud and are looking for engineers who can help them make the shift.

Job search portals list more than 20,000 jobs for profiles such as cloud engineer, cloud architect, architect and security implementation professional across different companies.

Salary surveys suggest that cloud professionals can earn anywhere from Rs 4 lakh per annum to Rs 35 lakh per annum, as they gain experience and skills.

Certifications and costs

AWS leads the cloud space with a revenue of about $7.6 billion in FY19 and a market share of over 50 percent, according to reports.

Cloud providers account for about 60 percent of the cloud-computing jobs, Simplilearn blog quotes job portal Indeed as saying. Hence, the demand for AWS certified professionals is significant.

The platform offers two different sets of certifications, role and solutions based.

Role-based include four levels --cloud practitioner, architect, operations and developer while solution-based course includes machine learning, storage and AWS media services.

Exam cost of these certifications range from $100 to $300, from beginner to the specialisation.

Azure is the second-largest cloud player with a market share of 29 percent and revenue of $3.4 billion in FY19, according to reports.

Azure offers 12 certifications from basics to experts covering four key roles such as developer, administrator, architect and functional consultant.

After fundamentals, one can move on to associate roles such as cloud administrator, developer, security engineer, AI engineer, data scientist, data engineer and data-base administrator. These require typically couple of years of work experience.

Two expert certifications Azure DevOps Engineer and Solutions Architect may require more than three years of experience, as expertise in computer, storage and security is a must along with the ability to combine processes with technologies.

Certifications costs range from $99 for fundamentals to $165 for expertise.

Google Cloud, which is fast catching up with AWS and Azure, has 18 percent market share with $2.3 billion in revenue for FY19, according to reports.

Similar to other service providers, Google Cloud offers different career paths. There are seven certifications offered by the platform. This includes associate cloud engineer, professional cloud engineer, data engineer, cloud DevOps engineer, cloud network engineer, cloud security engineer and professional collaboration engineer.

The associate cloud engineer certification requires six months of experience working on Google Cloud. Professionals requires more than three years of experience.