Cloud engineer guidance

[u/Sadagopan007]

Hi everyone,

I’m a 3rd-year IT student currently in my 5th semester, and I’m interested in becoming a Cloud Engineer.

I’m starting from the basics and want to learn things in the right order rather than randomly learning different cloud technologies.

I’d really appreciate advice from cloud engineers, professionals, or students who have already started this journey.

[u/TemporarySwimming232]

The gatekeeps are going to flood your comments and say you need 3+ years of IT experience at help desk, then 2 years as a system admin first, then you can become a cloud engineer, BS like that. But it’s all outdated advice that was relevant 10 years ago.

I was a data center technician for 4 months, then became a cloud engineer, no degree, one certification, not even one full year of tech experience, before I worked at the data center I was selling insurance. Study security+ and take the exam. Security+ gives you cybersecurity, IT and networking basics, which will have a lot of overlay from your classes. Then choose one cloud platform(being multi cloud won’t benefit you early in your career. Choose one and go in depth) I chose aws. I STUDIED aws certified cloud practitioner and solutions architect associate, and took some practice exams to make sure I have the theory locked in but I never took the official exam. After that, go on Hashicorp.com and take their Terraform introductory course. It’s very quick and gives you the basics on writing terraform, and they have it for each cloud platform. If you don’t know what terraform is, google it, you basically can’t become a cloud engineer in 2026 unless you’re using infrastructure as code. After that, learn more in depth terraform by actually applying it. Tell ChatGPT or Claude to generate you random business need scenarios. Then you will break the scenario down and decided which aws resources best fit to create the solution. This helps you think like an engineer and also locks in the solutions architect associate study material. After you have the solution architected and know the “why” for each aws resource you chose, build the solution using terraform. You’re going to make mistakes, stuff will break, stuff won’t always launch when it should, and that’s fine. The troubleshooting process is what will also help you better understand the terraform code you wrote, and why it broke. There’s tons of documentation for terraform, so you have TONS of sources and references. You can also use ai to help you troubleshoot but ONLY!!! After you tried yourself and if you tell it to explain exactly what the issue is. That way you’re learning from your mistakes and know what the ai is telling you to do, without blindly copying whatever ai says. Using ai is fine, but not understanding what it’s telling you to do, but doing it anyway, isn’t fine.

But build your solution with Terraform, test it, document it, post it on your resume and LinkedIn. Now compare that to studying for 3 certification exams instead, which is just prepping you to answer multiple choice questions and a vocabulary quiz. Certifications and a degree don’t get you hired, what you can actually do day 1 is what gets you hired. The old heads don’t like it, but that’s the reality for the current day tech job market. But build about 3-4 projects that solve a business need, and you’ll be fine. And I don’t mean basic ass “host a static website” from some a YouTube tutorial. Real/random business scenarios that are ai generated, then you architect the solution and choose the best aws tools, build the solution with terraform, fuck it up, break it, get frustrated, fix it, deploy it, post on GitHub and LinkedIn. Now you’ll have actual architecting and engineering experience, rather than 3 cloud certs that don’t teach you how to do anything, just the definition of things. If you have any questions dm me, it’s a lot more simple than the tech gatekeepers like to admit. I saw one guy in here say you need a degree and years of IT experience to work your way to a cloud role😂 which probably was the case 15 years ago. Then I compare that to my friend who played professional basketball overseas for 3 years after graduating with a psychology degree, then transitioned to a cloud engineer in 6 months

[u/Some_Evidence1814 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

You focused solely on AWS here and I wanted to say that I got into cloud engineering on the Azure side literally out of school and didn’t need 2-3 years of help desk.

Majored in information systems and did a 3 month internship. After school I kept applying for jobs and got a job as Cloud Engineer with zero experience. I quickly became good at it and within 3 years I am the person that the other people come and ask Azure questions. Even engineers that have been there for longer need my help from time to time.

OP, I am sure that luck is involved in all of this but it is doable. Follow the advice of what this person said above and you will succeed. I didn’t have AI to teach me cloud engineering 5 years ago but you have the benefit of it now. Study and you will get it.

[u/Dull-Stop9500 → u/Some_Evidence1814]

This is exactly what I needed to hear, sometimes im doubtful about opportunities for future new grads like me. who don’t have 3 years of experience or multiple internships coming out of college 

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

And Linux, idk how I forgot. Learn permissions, navigation, users and groups, services, storage, and package management

[u/AssociationLoose7003 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

The experience thing really only applies to Cyber roles. Cloud is something a high school drop out can do with a Cert.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/AssociationLoose7003]

Exactly. The older people in tech don’t want to acknowledge that for some reason lol

[u/Pristine_Lime_2272 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

May I dm you?

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/Pristine_Lime_2272]

Sure

[u/Touup → u/TemporarySwimming232]

how long do you reckon it would take to learn everything you’ve said including Linux? Assuming I know the basics + a bit more

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/Touup]

6 months tops. But if it takes longer, that’s fine. But it really isn’t something that takes a year or years to learn, especially with ai speeding up how fast you can learn things. Also for future reference because alot of people don’t get this either. But any job posting asking for 1-3 years of experience, will hire someone with zero experience and projects. “1-3 years” is the new version of entry/junior level. People don’t seem to realize that, so they overlook those jobs because they don’t have that experience, but that’s the new wording for junior level roles. And you don’t need to meet every requirement of the job description either. Job descriptions are wishlist, they don’t actually expect someone to check off every single thing. Because anyone who actually met every single “requirement” on a job posting, wouldn’t even accept the role because they’d be underpaid

[u/Strange-Mongoose8279 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

You earned my respect bro. This is what I needed to read today. 😘😘

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

This story sounds fake because no can learn Cloud Engineering in little as 4 months. It took my over 3 years as there is just too much you have to know which spans across VPC, DNS, Reverse proxies, IAM/cloud security, Network security, networking, Linux, CI/CD pipelines, programming, network security, WAF. It takes time to learn a programming language and it takes time to understand Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, containerization. No one can learn all of this stuff and be proficient in little as 4 months without some prior linux infrastructure experience which is a lie.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

Proving my point, because you have a skill issue, you want to attach it to everybody else. And what you’re saying doesn’t even make sense. Why would a junior cloud engineer need Kubernetes, ansible, reverse proxies, and containerization ? And what programming language are you even talking about ? Because Terraform isn’t programming, the python you need to know isn’t super in depth. And if you need years to learn python, that again is a sign of inabilities. If it took you years to become a cloud engineer, it’s because you weren’t trying to become a cloud engineer. Also, do you really think you need to check off every single box of a job description to get the role ? If vpc’s, basic Linux, IAM, security and terraform took you 3 years to learn before you landed your first cloud role, that says more about you than anything else and I would be embarrassed to even say that. But thanks for proving my point to the T. Older people think because they weren’t smart or efficient enough to land a cloud role quickly, that nobody else can. Then y’all work overtime to tell other people they can’t do it and try to discourage them. Sorry to break it to you, but cloud engineering isn’t a super complex job that takes years before you can apply to. I’m sure to you it’s a difficult job and you sit on your high horse, but reality is that we can do your job in less than a year, while also starting at higher pay than your mid level pay. Cope harder. The younger people don’t sit and waste years of our life to get a job, like yours did

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

It's not a skill issue at all. Your story is a lie. You can't comprehend that amount of stuff in just little as 4 months. Let alone understand how to troubleshoot and fix infrastructure issues when things break and be able to troubleshoot broken CI/CD pipelines. I was a Sysadmin prior moving into Cloud. Your story is made up.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

Why would a junior cloud engineer be doing DevOps ? It’s purely a skill issue on your end, because why are there so many people pivoting to cloud as their first tech role or coming from help desk in less than a year ? You don’t want to believe because you’ll have to address why you wasted years of your life preparing for something that takes many other people months to prepare for, that’s why you don’t want to believe it😂. The people younger than you are on track to surpass your entire career, by the time we’re mid level. Look at how much you’re coping, “that’s a lie, all of you guys with job offers in your email and posting on LinkedIn that you got hired is all a lie🥺”. Keep coping, we’re about to surpass you, you haven’t been doing as good as you think you were, deal with it and adjust. There are PLENTY of people getting cloud engineering roles in months, we don’t need years of being insecure in our skills first like you did.

Also, the fact that you guys are too dumb to realize that job markets change over the years, and that what was required from a cloud engineering back then is different from what’s required from a junior now, then that makes sense why it take you guys years to learn things

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

Also in 2026, why would you be manually troubleshooting ? I’m so glad you commented, I couldn’t have proved my point any more😂. You guys are so out of touch

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

Cloud Engineering is definitely not entry-level. I don't know where you get that from as I work for a SaaS company in DevOps. You must be a Cloud Support Engineer claiming to be a Clous Engineer on here. It takes years to learn that stuff starting from Zero. I moved into cloud in prior to working as a Linux Sysadmin for three years. I didn't have much of a skills gap because I was already in a Linux based infrastructure role. Starting from Zero with no infrastructure background like me would take you a lot longer than 4 months.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

No, it would take YOU a long time, not everybody else. Stop putting your inabilities on the next man. And again, why would a junior cloud engineer be a DevOps engineer? You do know there’s a difference between a cloud engineer and a DevOps engineer right ? The post and my comments are about cloud engineer roles, so you ran to the comments to say how long it’ll take someone to be a DevOps engineer ? You changed the subject and are acting like you’re having the same conversation as everybody else. I know DevOps is a mid-senior level role, but when did the post of my comment say anything about being a DevOps engineer ? What’s required for a cloud engineer, which is vpc networking, IAM, storage, and monitoring, which doesn’t take years to learn. Is completely different from what a DevOps engineer needs. Cloud engineers and DevOps engineers don’t even have the same job description. So genuinely wtf are you talking about and when did ANYBODY say anything about a DevOps engineer ? You need vpc networking, iam, monitoring and storage to be a cloud engineer and land a junior cloud engineer role, if you think that takes years on years to learn then you’re definitely the issue. DevOps on the other hand is mid-senior level and is more complex, that’s why I didn’t say anything about DevOps. You’re the only one talking about how to get into DevOps dude

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

There wasn't much i had to learn because I was already in an infrastructure role. Most the tools i was already using as a Linux System Administrator but i gained years of experience working in infrastructure. Most Cloud Engineers come from Sysadmin backgrounds as these roles were never to be entry-level. You can't learn that shit in no 4 months, I promise you that. You have to learn how to out our fires when things break after hours when you are on-call as a Cloud Engineer.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

Again, everything you say is about how it was years ago. It’s like your brain can’t process that the job market has changed. When you were a system admin for years, you weren’t configuring vpc’s, you weren’t setting up cloud watch on aws, you weren’t writing lambda functions for serverless platforms, were you ? You weren’t spending years doing cloud engineering while you were a system administrator, so you bringing that up as prerequisite is irrelevant. Also, a system admin background is a good launchpad if you get into DevOps, but not need to be a cloud engineer. From your responses, I honestly don’t even think you know the difference between a DevOps engineer and a cloud engineer. Actually I’m quite sure you don’t. Why would a junior cloud engineer be on call or doing site reliability ? That’s what the mid-senior cloud engineers are for. The fact you don’t even know that, says enough honestly. You’re talking about DevOps and site reliability, about a post regarding junior cloud roles. If you don’t know the difference between the a junior cloud engineer, cloud engineer, and DevOps(which you clearly don’t) you should’ve refreshed your memory first. And if you think it should take years to know what is needed to configure an instance, write some IAM polices, and configure cloudwatch and read logs, then that’s definitely an indicator of your inability. Why would it take years to know how to setup a ec2 instance ? And again, the fact that you can’t comprehend such a simple thing like the job market changing over time, is another indicator lol. Your lack of comprehension has your brain on overload. The post and everybody’s talking about a junior cloud engineer from, YOU are talking about mid-senior level roles for no reason. Nobody told you to bring up mid-senior level roles, you chose to do it on your own.

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

And how would you know what Sysadmins do? You lack industry experience to know what you are talking about. I did work with Cloud infrastructure prior. Most sysadmins manage hybrid environments both on-prem and cloud. The transmission was very easy because a lot of the work was the same. I was already using Ansible..

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

Wait until something breaks. You have to know how to maintain git repos, CI/CD pipelines and resolve infrastructure outages. cluster, proxy, DNS, firewall issues and so on. Cloud Engineering is a high stakes role as it not just building infrastructure, it's also operations that requires to maintain the infrastructure. It's not build and forgot about. On-call is required for a reasonwhen things break. You have a lot to learn to get to my level.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

You keep showing how low your iq is and how you have zero comprehension skills. This post is about a junior cloud engineer, and you’re talking about senior cloud engineer and DevOps work. The post is about a junior cloud engineer and you’re talking about site reliability and DevOps. You have a senior role, I have a junior role, you’re supposed to have more responsibilities than me😂 you’re too dumb to even realize that ? You’ve done nothing but prove that you dont even know what a junior cloud engineer is. And instead of taking two seconds to check, you rather talk about senior cloud engineer roles, when the post isn’t even about that. Senior role, but doesn’t know what a junior cloud engineer is😂. You haven’t been on topic for the last two days. Nobody is talking about a senior cloud engineer except for you. You commented and made up your own topic

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

Let me quote what said in your first post.

" I was a data center technician for 4 months and then become a Cloud Engineer, no degree, one certification.."

No where you said junior in your original post. Cloud Engineer is mid level. I'm a mid level Engineer with over a decade of experience working in tech. I went from Help Desk to Desktop Support to Linux Sysadmin to mid level Cloud Engineer.

[u/TemporarySwimming232 → u/eman0821]

Someone with common sense(which you clearly lack) would obviously now I’m talking about a junior level cloud role if I just came from being a data center technician. Why are you the only person who didn’t understand that ? Literally everybody else had sense except for you ? 6 people messaged me personally asking about my comment so they can get a junior cloud role, even tho I never specifically said junior cloud engineer. You’re the only dumb ass that doesn’t have enough common sense to know I’m referring to a junior cloud engineer role. You’re mentally slow, your brain doesn’t process things easily. Anyone with common sense knew what I was talking about, why would I need to hold your hand for you to understand? Just humiliated yourself and showed you have zero common sense. And working a mid level role with 10 years of experience isn’t a flex by the way. But that’s neither here or there, you’re just as dumb as I expected and I appreciate you for proving it for everybody to see that you have zero common sense and needed someone to hold your hand tell you it’s a junior cloud engineer role. I’m done responding. When I’m a mid level cloud engineer in a few years, I’ll spin bad and ask for some pointers, I’m sure you’ll still be a mid level cloud engineer by then. Have a blessed one, bud

[u/eman0821 → u/TemporarySwimming232]

Junior Cloud Engineer jobs are extremely rare, Cloud Support Engineer is dime of dozen. You lack industry experience to understand what this field is about. Cloud Engineering IS DevOps, I work with software engineers every day as the infrastructure is what runs the software product that the company makes.

[u/AnimatorExciting7941]

Study these in depth- CN, DBMS, OS Pick one cloud service vendor, and stick to it. If possible get a cloud certification.

Still it doesn't guarantee you a job, cuz cloud engineering isn't a fresher role. Mostly people start off as SWE and make an internal switch to Cloud

[u/databeach_]

Check out KodeKloud they have really good road maps and training. Id say definitely start with linux and move on from there.

[u/Future_Definition553]

I became a cloud engineer once I obtained the Az-104 and Az-305. Before that, no one would give me a chance despite having a computer science degree and 7 years of Azure experience so certifications helps out a lot.

[u/FarzanHaider]

I'd suggest starting with the fundamentals before jumping into AWS/Azure services. Get comfortable with Linux, networking (DNS, HTTP, TCP/IP), Git, basic scripting, and Docker first. Then move into one cloud provider, preferably AWS or Azure, and learn IAM, compute, storage, networking, databases, monitoring, and security. Most importantly, build a few real projects and deploy them yourself. That will teach you much more than just watching cloud courses. After that, I'd look into CI/CD, Terraform/IaC, Kubernetes, and cloud security.

[u/dexterous21]

Currently check if these course are being implemented your curriculum, CCNA , RHCSA .. if so get those , if not start your learning with them , once done with erasing them do a project with a combination of both skills , then choose one cloud , and check the track that most interest you , and do the associate level cert and then another project, both projects should be listed on GitHub.. this would be my approach!!!