Cloud Engineer Roadmap

The journey to master cloud infrastructure, from design and deployment to operation and optimization on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

🧭 Overview: Who is a Cloud Engineer?

A Cloud Engineer is a professional responsible for designing, deploying, managing, and maintaining infrastructure and applications on cloud computing platforms. They ensure the system is highly available, scalable, secure, and cost-effective.

Roadmap by Stages

Stage 1: IT & Networking Fundamentals 0-6 months

Goal: Build core infrastructure knowledge
  • Operating Systems: Proficient in Linux administration (Command Line, Shell Scripting, process management).
  • Networking Knowledge: Deep understanding of the TCP/IP model, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, Load Balancing, Firewall.
  • Virtualization: Understand the concept of virtual machines (VMs) and hypervisors.

Stage 2: Cloud Fundamentals & Provider Selection 6-12 months

Goal: Master core Cloud services (Choose 1)
  • Cloud Concepts: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Public/Private/Hybrid Cloud.
  • Major Providers: Focus on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
  • Core Services:
    • - Compute: EC2 (AWS), Virtual Machines (Azure), Compute Engine (GCP).
    • - Storage: S3 (AWS), Blob Storage (Azure), Cloud Storage (GCP).
    • - Networking: VPC (AWS), Virtual Network (Azure), VPC (GCP).
    • - IAM: Identity and Access Management.

Stage 3: Automation & IaC 1-2 years

Goal: Manage infrastructure with code
  • Scripting Languages: Python or Go for automating tasks.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Master Terraform for multi-cloud infrastructure management.
  • Configuration Management: Learn Ansible for automated server configuration.

Stage 4: Containers & DevOps2-3 years

Goal: Modernize applications and deployment processes
  • Containers: Master Docker for application packaging.
  • Orchestration: Use Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) for large-scale container orchestration.
  • CI/CD: Build automated pipelines with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Cloud CI/CD services (AWS CodePipeline).
  • Monitoring & Logging: CloudWatch (AWS), Azure Monitor, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack.

Stage 5: Security, Architecture & Optimization 3+ years

Goal: Become an expert in designing and securing Cloud systems
  • Cloud Security: Understand Security Groups, Network ACLs, IAM Policies, WAF, KMS.
  • Cloud Architecture: Design High Availability and Disaster Recovery systems.
  • Cost Optimization (FinOps): Monitor and optimize cloud service usage costs.
  • Serverless: Learn AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions.

🧩 Specialization Paths

Cloud Architect

Focuses on designing the overall system architecture on the cloud.

Cloud DevOps Engineer

Specializes in automating the build, test, and deployment (CI/CD) processes on the cloud.

Cloud Security Engineer

Specializes in security, protecting infrastructure and data in the cloud environment.