Cloud engineering offers a promising career path as companies build AI products and scale infrastructure, offering an opportunity for industry professionals to grow alongside the technological revolution. As businesses of all sizes build and deploy applications online, cloud engineering has become a resilient and high-growth career path for anyone working in software and AI.
Cloud engineers’ responsibilities span cloud architecture and deployment to ongoing maintenance, security, and optimization. While roles like DevOps engineer or site reliability engineer focus on delivery pipelines and reliability, cloud engineers specialize in building and managing the underlying cloud environments that applications run on. According to a 2025 Indeed report, the average annual salary for a cloud engineer in the United States is $135,681. Becoming a cloud engineer involves learning core programming concepts, developing cloud-specific knowledge, and gaining experience with cloud platforms—and doesn’t explicitly require earning a computer science degree. Let’s explore the skills, responsibilities, industry best practices, and paths you can follow to become a successful cloud engineer.
Key takeaways:
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A cloud engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining scalable cloud infrastructure that supports secure and reliable applications.
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A common learning path for cloud engineering includes understanding programming fundamentals, gaining hands-on experience, and deploying demo projects on cloud platforms.
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Cloud engineers build expertise in security, automation, and resource management to keep systems efficient and resilient.
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Cloud engineering offers strong career growth, multiple specialization paths, and high demand across industries adopting cloud technologies, like AI-native brands and startups.
What is a cloud engineer?
A cloud engineer is a software development professional who designs, implements, and manages cloud infrastructure. They use their expertise in cloud platforms to develop and maintain cloud solutions that improve cloud applications for businesses.
Cloud engineers use their technical knowledge and hands-on experience to drive innovation and efficiency in cloud computing systems, depending on the organization’s scale and goals. They may also collaborate with cloud architects, DevOps engineers, and other software engineers to build, manage, and optimize virtual networks and data storage systems.
Do you aspire to become a cloud engineer? Whether you’re just starting your cloud engineering journey or are already an experienced professional, DigitalOcean is a supportive workplace to build a career in cloud computing.
How to become a cloud engineer
The cloud engineering learning path involves a blend of education, hands-on experience, and developing a broad set of technical skills:
Develop a strong foundation in computer science fundamentals
A solid educational foundation in computer science provides essential knowledge of programming, operating systems, and database management. To gain this knowledge, enroll in a computer science or related degree program at a university or online institution.
It’s also worth considering learning via online resources, coding bootcamps, or certifications, such as:
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Flatiron School: Immersive online programs in software engineering, data, and AI, combining structured coursework with career coaching.
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General Assembly: Provides full-time and part-time bootcamps in software engineering, data, and IT. General Assembly focuses on hands-on projects, industry-led instruction, and networking. Both online and on-campus courses are available.
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App Academy: Intensive online software engineering curriculum focused on full-stack development. Emphasizes problem-solving, real-world projects, and career preparation.
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Hack Reactor: Beginner-friendly and advanced online coding bootcamps that blend core computer science fundamentals with AI-assisted development and career coaching support.
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Codecademy: Provides online self-paced and guided learning paths in programming, cloud, cybersecurity, and data. Curriculum comprises interactive lessons and certification-aligned skill tracks.
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Le Wagon: Coding bootcamps focused on web development, data, and AI via hands-on projects, collaborative learning, and career-focused outcomes. Options are available for both online and on-campus courses.
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Springboard: Mentor-led, flexible online programs in software engineering, data, and AI. Combines project-based learning with 1:1 mentorship and career coaching.
When choosing a coding bootcamp, assess the curriculum, job placement rates, and whether the program offers hands-on projects that align with your career goals. Based on your interests, look for bootcamps that offer specialized tracks in cloud computing, DevOps, or cybersecurity. This foundational knowledge will help you understand how software and systems operate for developing and managing cloud solutions.
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Explore our guide to AI/ML bootcamps to understand which programs align with your skills, goals, and experience level.
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Evaluate leading AI certifications and identify which suit your experience and goals.
Learn programming skills
Proficiency in programming languages like Python, Java, and Ruby is necessary for automating cloud-related tasks and developing cloud-based applications. Learn new programming languages through online courses, coding bootcamps, or university programs. Practice by building small projects or contributing to open source software. DigitalOcean’s comprehensive tutorials and documentation help you understand, deploy, and manage cloud applications.
Explore practical guides and topics related to cloud and AI workflows.
Gain hands-on experience
Practical experience with cloud-based systems helps you better understand theoretical cloud concepts. Facilitate gaining experience in cloud technologies and environments through personal projects, hackathons (like Hacktoberfest), internships, or entry-level positions. Use code repository platforms like GitHub to store and share your cloud projects. By contributing to real-world projects, you gain practical experience in cloud engineering and strengthen your problem-solving skills, putting your knowledge to the test.
“Fostering empathy to understand how to solve problems collaboratively and clarify requirements is critical. It’s also immensely helpful to stay connected to the open source software movement that’s made all of this possible in the first place. There’s ample opportunity for growth—always be learning. It helps everyone: your career, your organization, your users."
- Neal Shrader, Principal Software Engineer
Explore popular cloud platforms
Understanding cloud architecture is essential for cloud engineering roles. Familiarize yourself with major cloud platforms such as DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform by taking online courses, attending workshops, and earning certifications on these platforms. Having knowledge of different cloud platforms can help you design a multi-cloud strategy, enabling you to choose and configure the right services for different projects.
Expand your cloud security knowledge
A strong understanding of cloud security helps cloud engineers succeed in their roles by properly managing access, protecting data, and ensuring cloud-based system security. Even after you’ve learned the fundamentals, it’s important to continue learning by taking specialized courses in cloud security, earning new certifications, and staying updated with the latest security practices and tools.
A solid understanding of core concepts will help you implement cloud security best practices:
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Identity and Access Management (IAM): Controls who can access cloud resources and what actions they are allowed to perform.
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Principle of least privilege: Ensures users and services are granted only the minimum permissions needed to do their jobs.
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Network isolation: Separates workloads and resources into controlled network boundaries to reduce exposure and limit potential attack paths.
Continuing to learn beyond the basics, through security-focused courses and building hands-on demos, will help you stay aware of evolving threats and best practices to secure cloud systems.
Build cloud management expertise
Learn how to manage cloud resources effectively in terms of monitoring cloud metrics, optimizing performance, and increasing cloud ROI. As with many other aspects of becoming a cloud engineer, you can learn cloud management through on-the-job experience, online courses, and certifications.
Develop strong technical skills
In addition to cloud-specific knowledge, strengthen your overall technical skills. This includes understanding operating systems like Linux, database management, plus a solid grasp of web services and machine learning. Cloud engineers work across multiple layers of the stack, from infrastructure provisioning to observability and automation:
| Category | Purpose | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud services | Run and manage core cloud resources such as compute, storage, and networking | Virtual machines, object storage, managed databases, Load Balancers |
| Infrastructure as Code (IaC) | Define, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure using version-controlled code | Terraform, Pulumi |
| Containers and orchestration | Package applications and manage containerized workloads at scale | Docker, Kubernetes, Helm |
| CI/CD and automation | Automate testing, building, and deployment pipelines | GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins |
| Monitoring and observability | Monitor system health, performance, and application behavior | Prometheus, Grafana, ELK / OpenSearch, Datadog |
| Configuration management | Maintain consistent system configurations across environments | Ansible, Chef, Puppet |
"Building and scaling a public cloud is deeply challenging and rewarding work. It allows you to build on concepts combined from all sorts of different disciplines—from infrastructure and virtualization concerns, all the way up to distributed systems and data scaling challenges in the control plane.” - Neal Shrader, Principal Software Engineer
What are the responsibilities of a cloud engineer?
Overall, cloud engineers manage and optimize cloud infrastructure. But their role spans multiple focus areas to ensure that cloud-based systems are efficient, secure, and scalable. The key responsibilities of a cloud engineer include:
Designing cloud solutions
Cloud engineers are tasked with designing strong and scalable cloud architecture tailored to business needs. They oversee the deployment and configuration of cloud resources, ensuring they meet the right requirements. A key responsibility of a cloud engineer is to ensure application uptime during peak times and optimize resource utilization. For instance, during a seasonal sales event, a cloud engineer might configure autoscaling for a cloud-based web application.
Additionally, by monitoring usage patterns and performance metrics, cloud engineers can adjust resource allocation to ensure that the excess is de-provisioned once the peak period is over. This approach avoids overutilization by adding resources only when needed and prevents underutilization by scaling down resources during off-peak times, ensuring cost-effectiveness and optimal performance.
Supporting disaster recovery
Having a disaster recovery plan in place ensures business continuity. A cloud engineer is responsible for configuring automated snapshots of virtual machines and critical servers in the cloud, taken at regular intervals and stored in a secure, off-site location. They might also conduct regular mock recovery drills to restore snapshots to a separate environment, ensuring all systems and data are recoverable as expected.
During hardware failures, these recovery procedures help restore service, minimizing downtime and mitigating potential data loss. Cloud engineers collaborate closely with an organization’s dedicated security team to improve overall system resilience and data protection measures.
Go behind the scenes with DigitalOcean engineers to see how culture, tooling, and collaboration help teams move fast and build with impact.
Ensuring cloud security
Cloud engineers are often charged with implementing related security measures and protecting cloud data resources. For example, they should be aware of best practices like two-factor authentication and Secure Shell protocol, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. It’s also important to be knowledgeable about popular security control frameworks such as SOC 2, SOC 3, and GDPR, to ensure compliance.
Automating cloud workloads
Cloud engineers carefully plan the automation of repetitive tasks. This increases efficiency, reduces manual effort, and optimizes the performance and cost-efficiency of cloud resources. Knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) helps them manage and provision computing resources through code rather than manual processes. This approach ensures consistency, reduces errors, and makes scaling and replicating infrastructure configurations across different environments easier.
Collaborating with teams
Cloud engineers work closely with development, operations, and security teams to integrate and optimize cloud solutions. As a cloud engineer, you might collaborate with DevOps engineers to implement CI/CD pipelines using an automation server like Jenkins and DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) for smooth deployment and integration processes.
Explore stories from DigitalOcean team members to understand how cloud engineering skills, curiosity, and hands-on experience shape cloud careers:
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Archana Kamath shares how she leads large-scale cloud infrastructure teams and builds the systems that power reliable, scalable platforms.
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Makeissah Robinson highlights how customer-focused engineering roles combine technical depth with problem-solving to support cloud users at scale.
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Shivani Kumar reflects on her journey working with serverless technologies and gaining hands-on experience in modern cloud environments.
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Vasily Prokopov walks through how solving real-world infrastructure challenges helps cloud engineers design scalable and resilient solutions.
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Darian Wilkin explains how engineers grow into leadership roles by working across cloud architecture, solution design, and cross-functional teams.
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Pranav Nambiar shares how curiosity and systems thinking drive innovation across cloud platforms and AI-powered services.
Career prospects for a cloud engineer
The demand for skilled cloud engineers grows as more businesses integrate cloud technologies with AI workflows. The cloud engineer roadmap is broad, offering diverse paths for professionals with a solid technical understanding of cloud technologies. Once you’ve built a solid foundation, you can further specialize with roles such as:
| Role | Job description |
|---|---|
| Cloud architect | Design and oversee the architecture of cloud systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security. |
| DevOps engineer | Automate and streamline the software development and deployment processes. |
| Cloud administrator | Manage and maintain cloud infrastructure, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. |
| Cloud security engineer | Focus on securing cloud environments and protecting against threats and vulnerabilities. |
| Cloud consultant | Advise organizations on cloud strategies, implementing and optimizing cloud solutions. |
| Cloud solutions engineer | Develop and implement cloud solutions tailored to business needs. |
| Cloud network engineer | Design and manage network infrastructure within cloud environments. |
| Cloud data engineer | Manage and optimize data storage and processing in cloud environments. |
| Machine learning engineer | Develop and deploy machine learning models within cloud environments. |
Cloud engineer vs DevOps engineer vs platform engineer
While cloud engineers, DevOps engineers, and platform engineers work closely together, each role focuses on a different layer of building, operating, and scaling modern cloud systems:
| Role | Main focus | Responsibilities | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud engineer | Cloud infrastructure | Design, provision, and manage cloud resources such as compute, storage, networking, and security | Knowledge of products in cloud platforms (like DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure), Terraform, networking, IAM |
| DevOps engineer | Delivery automation & reliability | Automate CI/CD pipelines, improve deployment speed, reliability, and system observability | CI/CD tools, containers, monitoring, IaC, scripting |
| Platform engineer | Internal developer platforms | Build and maintain platforms that abstract infrastructure and improve developer experience | Docker, Kubernetes, internal platforms to standardize how developers operate software, APIs |
Cloud engineer FAQs
Do I need a degree to become a cloud engineer? A degree can help, but it’s not required to become a cloud engineer. Many professionals enter the field through self-study, certifications, and hands-on experience using cloud platforms like DigitalOcean.
Which cloud platform should I learn first? Beginners start with a developer-friendly cloud platform like DigitalOcean to understand core cloud concepts. As your skills grow, understanding how these fundamentals work in multi-cloud environments will help you understand how to approach other real-world situations. The best choice depends on your learning goals and the types of projects you want to build.
Are cloud certifications worth it? Cloud certifications help validate your skills and demonstrate your knowledge to employers. They are most valuable when combined with a fundamental education of related concepts, plus practical experience building and managing cloud-based projects.
How long does it take to become a cloud engineer?
The time it takes to become a cloud engineer can take anywhere from several months to a few years, depending on your background, learning pace, and hands-on experience. Beginners start by learning core concepts like Linux, networking, and cloud fundamentals. Then they move into certifications and real-world projects.
Can beginners become cloud engineers? Yes, beginners can become cloud engineers by learning foundational concepts, practicing with real projects, and gradually building hands-on experience. Many start with entry-level roles before moving into more advanced responsibilities.
What is the difference between a cloud engineer and a DevOps engineer? A cloud engineer focuses on designing and managing cloud infrastructure, while a DevOps engineer focuses on automating software delivery and operations. Both roles collaborate closely, but DevOps places more emphasis on CI/CD pipelines and workflow automation.
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About the author
Sujatha R is a Technical Writer at DigitalOcean. She has over 10+ years of experience creating clear and engaging technical documentation, specializing in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. ✍️ She combines her technical expertise with a passion for technology that helps developers and tech enthusiasts uncover the cloud’s complexity.
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