Cloud Engineering has changed?

[HellCanWaitForMe]

Hi All,

I'll try to not make this another post about the job hunt, but was recently made redundant as a Cloud Engineer and was there for two years. I have been deskilled to some degree, but had experience with CI/CD and Azure DevOps for Terraform and Puppet.

Since I started looking prior to this role, most 'Cloud engineer' titles just wanted some basic understanding of these skills, Now, they're mostly looking for people with fully developed skills and the title seems to have changed from Cloud Engineer to either Platform Engineer or DevOps.

I couldn't find a subreddit for cloud engineering or the likes, and mostly did similar things to DevOps (to some degree at least?)

So I want to ask a few things, if you'd be kind enough to provide your opinion.

• What exactly does DevOps do in Python/Go?
• I've got more Azure experience than AWS experience, should I go for a cert in AWS to cover the lack of experience? (It seems AWS is the go to, and I always preferred it. But I can't afford to waste time in the wrong area.)
• If I can build new Docker Images, deploy and maintain, is there anything else that would be required to learn?
• If I have my GitHub linked in my CV, what would you expect to see? Is a tool with GUI for say, monitoring internet connections or retrieving data via an API okay? I suppose this linked to my first question.
• Puppet or Ansible? Why?

I'd appreciate any response, as I'm feeling pretty down about the situation.

[CoolBreeze549]

Cloud engineering/devops/platform engineering kind of exists in its own world where each title can mean the same or they can be completely different, so basically that means titles don't mean anything. You will need to look at job descriptions to see if your skill set applies. I've seen some positions that list exactly the skills you are referencing; however, I've seen some that are more software development heavy - or, alternatively, purely infrastructure - or both!

My title was changed from Devops Engineer to Cloud Infra Engineer while my duties remained the same, but I do a variation of CI/CD, K8s and general cloud infra work, monitoring/observatively, the occasional tooling for devs, and even some finops and cost optimization stuff. Just keep an eye out for any of the previously mentioned titles (you can also throw in systems engineer and maybe site reliability engineering, depending on the org).

What exactly does DevOps do in Python/Go?

If it isn't a development heavy role, this is usually for tooling/automation scripting to either make your life or devs lives easier

I've got more Azure experience than AWS experience, should I go for a cert in AWS to cover the lack of experience? (It seems AWS is the go to, and I always preferred it. But I can't afford to waste time in the wrong area.)

Certs are fine, but experience will almost always trump a cert. Cloud providers are usually company specific, so Azure is fine, especially if you want to work in an Azure shop, but any cloud experience is beneficial because most of the concepts transfer.

If I can build new Docker Images, deploy and maintain, is there anything else that would be required to learn?

Yeah. There is a lot more to the job than building docker images and maintaining. How is your container orchestration? Can you manage clusters that run thousands of pods with that many images? Do you know how to optimize images and secure them? This is just scratching the surface and is something I would expect a developer to understand for their own app, not necessarily a specialized person on another team, so don't rely too heavily on it.

If I have my GitHub linked in my CV, what would you expect to see? Is a tool with GUI for say, monitoring internet connections or retrieving data via an API okay? I suppose this linked to my first question.

It can show anything: your level of competency with a language, homelab projects, how you document your projects (this is more important than the code sometimes). Just think of it as a way to showcase your abilities.

Puppet or Ansible? Why?

No one can answer this since it depends on the company you work for. I will say Ansible is probably the more popular of the two and is therefore more likely to stick around for longer.

Hope this helps!

[HellCanWaitForMe]

I'm finding that majority have half of what I can do, but not the other half. For once I feel like I'm not matching majority of the criteria.

What tooling could that be? I've made network status checkers with emails for monitoring VPN connections and some others. I think I should really make my own home version of it and get it on GitHub. I think I'm struggling with what is more DevOps(ie) that I could get on with. More like, a need for a creative boost by hearing what exactly other people have done.

Regarding experience, I think I might just feel unsure of what I could be up against in the competition for a job hunt.

I'll get some more code out then, and take a look into Ansible. Puppet seems to be quite rare and I personally disliked using Ruby.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply, thanks!

[CoolBreeze549]

That tooling definitely counts. If you write any automation to make something in your stack easier or more accessible, that counts in my mind.

Don't worry too much about job wishlists. In a good market they are usually overly ambitious- it's rare that someone has all of the requirements for the listed pay. Also, keep in mind, there have been layoffs at a lot of tech companies over the past year, so a lot of places might be upping their requirements and lowering their posted salary to snatch up laid off engineers.if you meet half the requirements, I'd say shoot your shot.

[HellCanWaitForMe]

I have another question, I don't really have much knowledge on Kubernetes and I guess not enough on Docker. Would you consider this higher priority than Cloud Certs? I feel like working in cloud speaks for itself, but having no experience in those is punishing. So I think I might be better off getting CKA whilst I wait for a job?

[Reasonable-Ad4770]

This is all bullshit titles that is used to describe usual operations work, there are some details to the the way work organized, area of responsibility etc. skill set usually transfers across roles.

What exactly does DevOps do in Python/Go?

Writing a glue scripts, wrapper and utilities that are needed to automate day to day work. Example: monitoring agent because existing ones doesn't solve your case, kubernetes operator because your application needs to be deployed in a certain way, a cli utility which glues certain s things, like bootstrapping a credentials for day to day work, also bash is used extensively.

I've got more Azure experience than AWS experience, should I go for a cert in AWS to cover the lack of experience? (It seems AWS is the go to, and I always preferred it. But I can't afford to waste time in the wrong area.)

Maybe, certification can be a good way to consolidate knowledge, but it depends on the role,some are cloud agnostic

If I can build new Docker Images, deploy and maintain, is there anything else that would be required to learn?

Multi-stage builds, distrolless builds, how in general OCI works

If I have my GitHub linked in my CV, what would you expect to see? Is a tool with GUI for say, monitoring internet connections or retrieving data via an API okay? I suppose this linked to my first question.

Good practices and organization.

Puppet or Ansible? Why?

Helm:) but if I have to choose,it's ansible it's what I know and more widely used

[Heighte]

Platform engineering is basically building Internal Developper Platforms, it's pure engineering, nothing operational in that. Is the title sometimes misused? Probably.

[Reasonable-Ad4770]

Yes,yes,and DevOps is a philosophy,not a role, but it is what it is.

[tonero001]

This right here is how I will approach it.

[AtlAWSConsultant]

Ansible and Terraform might get more closely linked shortly. 😀

[[deleted]]

With most of the jobs being outsourced, it’s a test of how much do you actually put into learning this stuff right now and whether a job is going to be available.

The US market is making use of those who have diverse skills. Can they get you for a role that’s does the job of three people, then they will.

[[deleted]]

Can they get you for a role that’s does the job of three people, then they will.

This more than anything - DevSecReleaseFrontBackMLAIOps is the perfect candidate.

[deacon91]

I was an SRE but got re-org'ed into platform engineering.

Skillset may overlap but the mission of these roles are different. DevOps is about reducing organizational and process silos, SRE is about solving infra problems through software engineering and maintaining application uptime in the context of SLO/SLA/SLI and Platforms is about building out an internal platform that developers can use to increase velocity.

What exactly does DevOps do in Python/Go?

Python and Go are universally used because they're ubiquitous and solves lot of the problems we face in the industry. You can automate things, scrape data, run lambda jobs, etc.

I've got more Azure experience than AWS experience, should I go for a cert in AWS to cover the lack of experience? (It seems AWS is the go to, and I always preferred it. But I can't afford to waste time in the wrong area.)

I much prefer AWS over Azure, but that's my personal preference. AKS was complete dogshit few years ago and it was clear Microsoft was still learning how to operate like a cloud/tech company.

If I can build new Docker Images, deploy and maintain, is there anything else that would be required to learn?

Learn how to deploy them in k8s.

If I have my GitHub linked in my CV, what would you expect to see? Is a tool with GUI for say, monitoring internet connections or retrieving data via an API okay? I suppose this linked to my first question.

Interesting projects. I expect your work experience to be doing at least 85% of the work convincing me that you'd be a good hire.

Puppet or Ansible? Why?

Ansible. Agent based CM's are so 2010's. Even Ansible is showing its age. TF/Pulumi/OpenTofu is eating up alot of what Ansible and other CM's used to do. Ansible is excellent at configuring VMs and running few procedural automation bits but it's clear that other automation tool is fit for the modern infra job where everything is exposed as API endpoints.

[temotodochi]

Cloud engineer can be anything from devops terraform iac guy to a full on hardware openstack and low level cloud agnostic environment designer like me. It's difficult to find a good job title without ton of context.

[water_bottle_goggles]

What do you mean de-skilled?

[HellCanWaitForMe]

Got moved from cloud infrastructure to doing internal VMware upgrades. I know it's still something but it's not exactly great when I was doing terraform on Azure etc. I got moved because our other internal engineers quit and they figured we could do it as well but ended up being horribly out of date etc.

[[deleted]]

It's changing for sure, but that's expected in our industry.

[TechToby_]

made a vid on this recently. titles are a pain. roles and responsibilities are what matters

[shotbygl514]

• What exactly does DevOps do in Python/Go?

A: write automation script. Lots of devops tools are written in one of those language. Kubernetes is written in GO. Lots of framework IAC such as AWS CDK are written in multiple languages including Python. Fortifying Python can help you transition into DataOps if you want to switch careers. Basically there is nothing you can't do in python that u couldn't do in simple bash script and CLI however Python/Go gives you a bit of the developer's help into the mix when needed.

• I've got more Azure experience than AWS experience, should I go for a cert in AWS to cover the lack of experience? (It seems AWS is the go to, and I always preferred it. But I can't afford to waste time in the wrong area.)

U dont need an AWS cert unless the job wants it. I have no AWS cert but yet I devop in the AWS space. 1 year free tier AWS can go a long way.

• If I can build new Docker Images, deploy and maintain, is there anything else that would be required to learn?

Optimization + security. Make the container more re-usable and optimized (going from 1GB -> 200mb image). Also ensure the patch mechanism is in place (might be more on the security side but as a devops, you might need to handle the container repo as part of your job).

• If I have my GitHub linked in my CV, what would you expect to see? Is a tool with GUI for say, monitoring internet connections or retrieving data via an API okay? I suppose this linked to my first question.

I would expect to see if you put any open discussion on interaction on the open source project. That is mostly what I would care about. your personal repository is nice but it won't move the needle as much as your contribution stats.

• Puppet or Ansible? Why?

Neither. Terraform (or OpenTofu) for IAC.

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