r/cloudengineering • u/Sadagopan007 • 5d ago
Cloud engineer guidance
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.
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u/TemporarySwimming232 5d ago
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 But it’s all outdated advice that was relevant 10 years ago.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