1. Cloud roles
Hello! To wrap up this chapter, we'll take a look at cloud computing roles. In previous videos, you learned how cloud adoption can reduce maintenance and operational costs, including personnel. While that's true, the rush to adopt cloud computing has created a huge demand for cloud-related skills in the job market.
2. Most in-demand skill: cloud computing
The employment search engine Indeed listed cloud computing as the most in-demand skill in February of 2020. LinkedIn has it listed as the second hard skill companies need most after blockchain. This means cloud computing skills are ranked as more in-demand than artificial intelligence and machine learning skills!
In fact, all the major cloud providers have established certifications for different cloud skills and roles, specific to their cloud platform and services. These are viewed as very valuable in today's job market.
3. Familiar data roles and the cloud
Familiar data roles, like data scientist, machine learning scientists, data engineers and data analyst, can all benefit from learning about the cloud.
For example, data scientists can benefit from running computationally expensive analyses on the cloud, which not only saves on cost, but also reduces the time it takes to run because of the vast computation power available on the cloud.
Machine learning scientists can train and deploy machine learning models on the cloud. This is something that's typically computationally expensive, especially when we're talking about deep learning.
It's standard now for data engineers to be proficient on the cloud. Data engineers build pipelines on the cloud to ingest, transform, and store big data securely and efficiently.
Even less technical roles, such as a data analyst, can be expected to know how to access data from the cloud via business intelligence tools, like Tableau or Power BI.
Generally, having analyses in the cloud make it easier for teams to collaborate because you aren't passing files from one machine to the next.
4. Creation of new cloud roles
Additionally, the rise of cloud computing has also created new job titles, notably: cloud architect and cloud engineer. It has also increased the need for roles like DevOps engineer and security engineer. Let's go through each briefly to understand how they work to make the cloud possible in an organization. As you will see, there is often overlap in how these growing roles are defined.
5. Cloud architect
A cloud architect is a solutions architect essentially for the cloud. A cloud architect takes the technical requirements of a business problem, designs an appropriate cloud infrastructure, and comes up with a plan to deploy said infrastructure. They have to ensure that their design is scalable and optimized for cost.
6. Cloud engineer
Cloud engineers build, maintain and monitor cloud services. They are often responsible for migrating on-premise solutions to the cloud. This title is often used as a catch-all for any technical work required on the cloud. For example, in smaller companies, the cloud architect and engineer can be one role.
7. DevOps engineer
DevOps combines software development and IT operations. Previously, there were system engineers who maintained server infrastructure by physically configuring hardware. Now we do that by code, which is the developer aspect of DevOps. DevOps engineers ensure the reliability, availability, and scalability of the cloud through software development and automation.
For example, if there is a rise in usage, there should be some automation to increase resources or if a server shuts down unexpectedly, there should be an automatic patch and redeploy.
8. Security engineer
As we discussed in the last video, security is very important on the cloud and requires different technical requirements depending on geographic area. Security engineers spec the technical security requirements of an organization's cloud infrastructure. They work to test and asses the security of data on the cloud. Generally, they are responsible for protecting organization and user data from a technical perspective.
9. Let's practice!
The adoption of the cloud has defined new roles and created new skills for existing roles. Now it's time to wrap up the chapter with some practice!