WHAT DOES A CLOUD ENGINEER DO?
Published: May 26, 2025 – The Cloud Engineer designs and maintains secure, scalable cloud network architectures by collaborating with cross-functional teams and aligning solutions with industry best practices. This position manages cloud connectivity, operations, and architecture while integrating AWS and Azure services with enterprise tools for monitoring and event tracking. The engineer also develops comprehensive technical documentation and evaluates emerging cloud technologies to ensure performance, security, and compliance with standards such as TIC3.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Cloud Engineer
1. Cloud Engineer Accountabilities
- Strategic Problem Solving: Build complex enterprise ecosystems and solve high-level strategic problems
- Cloud Automation: Implement cloud-native automation and monitoring solutions
- Cloud Migration: Migrate the existing infrastructure to AWS Cloud and Kubernetes
- Cloud Coordination: Coordinate cloud migration with external consultants
- Cloud Operations: Carry out deployment, maintenance, monitoring, and management tasks within the implemented cloud structure
- IT Collaboration: Work closely with IT security and process management
- Technical Support: Respond to technical issues in a professional and timely manner
- Kubernetes Management: Create and maintain Kubernetes clusters and support the onboarding of existing and new applications
- Cloud Communication: Properly articulate complicated cloud topics to management and other IT development partners
- Cloud Training: Offer training and guidance on cloud adoption to other teams
- Cloud Cost Optimization: Keep on top of usage and costs in the cloud, and make sure the structure is operating at full efficiency
- CI/CD Optimization: Transform and optimize the existing CI/CD pipeline
- Process Automation: Automate all processes with appropriate tooling
2. Cloud Engineer Functions
- Cloud Needs Analysis: Analyze the needs of the units and help them choose the right cloud technology.
- Cloud Solution Design: Design for units/projects in the bank about technology solutions based on cloud technology.
- Cloud Deployment Collaboration: Work with partners to deploy cloud solutions
- Risk Assessment: Effectively weigh the potential risks of cloud technology solutions
- Cloud Security Support: Support deploying cloud solutions safely and securely
- Cloud Efficiency Audit: Implement efficiency audits of cloud technology in technology solutions
- Security Improvement: Through continuous assessment of security threats and vulnerabilities in the cloud, make recommendations, improve, and enhance when needed.
- Risk Management: Identify risks and coordinate with relevant units to propose methods of measuring and minimizing operational risks.
- Service Quality Assurance: Ensure that the teams in the department fulfill their commitments on service quality and comply with the Bank's regulations and policies.
3. Cloud Engineer Job Description
- Cloud Application Development: Be responsible for designing and implementing cloud-based applications that support various business cases, mainly related to data analytics and data warehousing
- Architecture Advisory: Advise on the optimal application architectures, taking into account technical soundness and cost efficiency
- Mentoring: Coach and mentor less experienced colleagues
- Solution Design Advisory: Act as an advisor to the team and stakeholders, supporting long-term solution design thinking on future web development architecture plans
- Business Requirement Analysis: Understand business/client requirements, ensure the solutions and services provided are relevant and address the key business needs
- Customer Engagement: Engage at all levels of the customer’s business, from working with senior/C-level leadership to guiding IT specialists and developers on building solutions
- Prototyping: Create, modify, and implement prototypes to support evolving software application development
4. Cloud Engineer Overview
- API Development: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define, design, and create services and APIs that support innovative user experiences.
- Backend Architecture: Help define and shape the backend architecture
- Platform Scaling: Scale the platform and build out new features.
- Frontend Contribution: Contribute to the frontend and develop new skills.
- Documentation: Create documentation to showcase work and support external and internal customers.
5. Cloud Engineer Details and Accountabilities
- DevOps Best Practices: Define DevOps best practices for the application teams and assist them in implementing these processes.
- Tool Ownership: Ownership and support of configuration management and deployment automation tools, including Jenkins, Jira, SonarQube, and Terraform.
- Security Implementation: Assist in the implementation of security best practices and initiatives at all levels of the infrastructure.
- Infrastructure Automation: Codify the current AWS infrastructure, automating and reporting on the environment.
- Monitoring Development: Work with development teams to develop alerting triggers, logging, and general application monitoring.
- Kubernetes Deployment: Create and maintain automated deployments based on Kubernetes.
- Technology Leadership: Thought leader on the future technologies used for environment management, automation, monitoring, and self-healing.
6. Cloud Engineer Tasks
- Azure Architecture Documentation: Develop and produce MS Azure-based architectural documentation, including providing best practice design recommendations for migration of applications from on-premise to the Azure Cloud.
- Cloud Infrastructure Design: Design a highly available and scalable cloud infrastructure tuned to project and business requirements, and the design should focus on secure configuration, utilising single sign-on and multi-factor authentication with adherence to the NCSC and ISO27001 standards.
- Cloud Services Management: Install, configure, automate, and monitor various cloud services, Infrastructure as a Service, and Platform (IaaS, PaaS).
- Azure Build Troubleshooting: Set up and troubleshoot Azure builds, including but not limited to ARM, ASR, SQL, Containers, and Azure AD.
- Application-Aware Configuration: Configure application-aware infrastructure to automatically handle application requirements, security, and disaster-preparedness functions such as back-ups and data recovery.
7. Cloud Engineer Roles
- Tech Leadership: Be the tech lead who develops and leads the maintenance of the department’s Azure and Office 365 environments, including ensuring support standards are met.
- Cloud Mentoring: Mentor other staff members in good-practice cloud management techniques.
- SOP Documentation: Create and maintain SOP documents for the Azure and Office 365 environments.
- Cloud Monitoring: Tune monitoring and alerting services within the Microsoft cloud ecosystem.
- Hybrid Cloud Support: Support hybrid cloud adoption, delivering and integrating Microsoft solutions within a hybrid cloud infrastructure-based environment.
- Technical Guidance: Provide technical guidance and expertise during new technologies initiatives.
- ICT Support: Provide support alongside other team members for the department’s ICT Infrastructure services.
8. Cloud Engineer Additional Details
- Deployment Automation: Provision build and release scripts to automate deployment processes using build tools.
- Code Promotion Design: Design systems to manage code promotion through various stages of software development.
- Process Automation: Help design and implement robust and maintainable solutions to automate processes to minimize manual efforts and ensure consistency across products.
- HA/DR Implementation: Implement HA/DR, security, capacity, and compliance strategies for new and existing applications.
- Coding and Research: Do hands-on coding/scripting and a lot of reading, research, and technology POCs.
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Participate in discussions with other teams to understand their processes and pain points.
- Design Communication: Explain design decisions to peers and articulate the advantages and risks of proposed approaches to senior personnel.
9. Cloud Engineer Essential Functions
- Strategic Relationship Management: Promote and effectively manage strategic relationships with internal and external customers, stakeholders, and service providers, promoting the department’s business objectives through key strategic relationships.
- Strategic Advisory: Provide strategic advice, contributing to and supporting the strategic direction of the department in the area of specialisation.
- Decision Making: Communicate and make decisions that are based on professional judgement, evaluating risks, and in the context of a complex environment.
- Organizational Understanding: Attain and maintain an extensive understanding of the role and responsibilities of the department, including an understanding of the APS operating environment more broadly.
- Project Oversight: Oversee and analyse project outputs, aims, and objectives.
- Technical Expertise: Maintain expert knowledge in relevant areas and provide advice and technical expertise to guide project and program activities.
10. Cloud Engineer Role Purpose
- Product Lifecycle Oversight: Work across multiple operational and technical disciplines and provide direction and oversight through the product development life cycle.
- Secure Cloud Architecture: Partner with the IT, engineering, and security teams to develop, deploy, and maintain secure cloud network architectures aligned to internal standards and current best practices.
- Global Network Design: Partner with Security and Network Engineering to design global routing within commercial cloud accounts, regions, and physical locations while maintaining appropriate segmentation of network traffic.
- Technical Point-of-Contact: Interface directly with internal and external clients/vendors and serve as primary technical point-of-contact for all matters related to Cloud Operations, Cloud Connectivity, and Cloud Architecture.
- Cloud Documentation: Develop and communicate technical documentation of existing and new cloud architectures within the responsible areas.
- Cloud Solution Architecture: Architect and define solutions that ensure the availability, capacity, performance, and security of services, such as auto-scaling, load balancers, gateways, endpoints, forward and reverse proxies, firewalls, traffic inspection, and remote access capabilities.
- Cloud Integration: Integrate AWS and Azure network and security services with enterprise tooling that enables monitoring, alerting, and retention of critical event information.
- Service Evaluation: Review and evaluate new AWS and Azure network services and service enhancements relevant to the current and future state infrastructure.
- Transport Architecture Documentation: Develop and communicate technical documentation of existing and new cloud architectures within the responsible areas, including transport models and architectures that are TIC3 compliant.