WHAT DOES A CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER DO?

Published: July 22, 2024 - The Cloud Infrastructure Engineer designs, manages, and supports both on-premise and cloud-based infrastructures, ensuring high availability and performance across corporate and production environments. This role includes leading the implementation of next-generation cloud architectures, utilizing automation scripts and modern tooling like Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes. Additionally, the engineer enhances system integration by developing quality Python scripts and reinforcing best practices in infrastructure management and CI/CD processes.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

1. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer Duties

  • Team Support: Providing guidance and support for development, QA, and customer service teams
  • Issue Escalation: Acting as an escalation point for BAU issues
  • Technical Resolution: Resolve technical issues and provide root cause analysis
  • Azure Platform Maintenance: Help maintain and support current and future Azure-based cloud platforms and infrastructure
  • Deployment Management: Carrying out deployments in UAT and Production environments following a strict change request process
  • Azure Experience: Have solid hands-on experience working on cloud-based platforms specifically, Microsoft Azure
  • Monitoring Implementation: Implement monitoring and logging solutions that enable the production systems to be monitored 24/7 using applications such as DataDog, AppDynamics, Splunk
  • Technical Expertise: Hands-on technically and love getting hands dirty in the detail
  • Management Consultation: Consult with management to devise the most useful ways to apply Azure/OneDrive/SharePoint to a business’s goals
  • Subject Matter Expertise: Requires to be a technical subject matter expert on both on-premise and cloud IT Infrastructure systems
  • Azure Solutions Analysis: Analyze, design, plan, test, deploy, secure and maintain/monitor, evaluate costs for enterprise-scale Microsoft’s Azure, OneDrive, and SharePoint platforms for the organizations’ critical applications and related IT infrastructure

2. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer Details

  • Cloud Infrastructure Analysis: Developed a detailed understanding of cloud infrastructure systems and identify areas for improvement
  • Kubernetes Platform Improvement: Helped design and implemented improvements to the Kubernetes platform
  • Tool Development: Supported the development of numerous tools/systems to support infrastructure goals
  • Kubernetes Cluster Management: Taken ownership of Kubernetes clusters and uptime and availability
  • Engineering Support: Responded to ad-hoc requests from other engineering teams and enable them to work with infrastructure and platforms
  • Kubernetes Architecture Improvement: Improvements to Kubernetes architecture to enable more efficient allocation of nodes
  • Role-Based Access Control: Role-based access control on Kubernetes clusters
  • AWS Resource Creation: Internal software systems and self-service tools to enable the creation of secure and compliant AWS resources
  • Infrastructure Design: Developing diagrams and architecture designs to support infrastructure changes
  • Microsoft Cloud Expertise: Apply and grow existing functional knowledge and technical expertise in the Microsoft cloud offerings
  • Cloud Platform Establishment: Review and manage technical requirements and business functional requirements to establish new cloud platforms

3. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer Responsibilities

  • Infrastructure Design: Design, manage, and support on-premise and cloud infrastructure
  • Technical Support: Provide exceptional technical support for corporate, non-production, and production environments
  • Software Deployment: Participate in the design and deployment of new software systems, services, components, features, etc.
  • System Documentation: Ensure that all critical systems and processes are well documented, monitored appropriately, and protected
  • Cloud Architecture Leadership: Lead next-gen cloud architecture, leveraging script automation and tooling
  • Infrastructure Building: Help design and build infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible, Docker, K8s, Jenkins, CodeBuild, and CodePipeline
  • CI/CD Integration: Help integrate infrastructure testing into the CI/CD process
  • Python Scripting: Develop high-quality Python scripts
  • Code Review: Review pull requests and help the team maintain Terraform best practices
  • Team Collaboration: Work closely with infrastructure and development teams to understand the business needs
  • Training and Information Sessions: Hold training and informational sessions to teach employees how to use Azure/OneDrive/SharePoint

4. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer Accountabilities

  • Cloud Solutions Implementation: Building, designing, deploying, and maintaining the implementation of cloud solutions across multiple public cloud offerings, AWS and GCP
  • Security Compliance: Ensuring cloud product development adheres to security program and data privacy regulations
  • Service Evaluation: Participating in new cloud service evaluation to provide more efficient and secure best practices
  • Process Documentation: Establishing documented best practice processes for the IT Operations team to support company requests
  • Cloud Best Practices: Understanding cloud best practices around architecture, security, and storage to meet company needs
  • Product Development Support: Collaborating with the Product Development team to provide support for application performance and infrastructure issues
  • Automation Development: Developing, enhancing, and maintaining automation of cloud enablement tools
  • Performance Optimization: Performing ongoing performance tuning, upgrades, and resource optimization
  • System Management: Manage all systems, monitoring applications, backups, and other related infrastructure
  • Secure Solution Architecture: Work closely with other departments to architect secure solutions, and identify/resolve operational issues
  • Site Layout Management: Provides guidance and manages and/or revises the layout of the sites

5. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer Functions

  • Service Distribution Design: Design new ways to run services across multiple data centers and cloud regions.
  • Network Scaling Engineering: Engineer and scale premise and cloud networks at a high level of availability and performance.
  • Infrastructure Vision Definition: Define infrastructure vision through Terraform, other automation tools, and infrastructure as code practices.
  • Tech Debt Reduction Brainstorming: Brainstorm and implement ways of reducing tech debt, automate repeated manual tasks, and improve team productivity.
  • System Scaling and Evolution: Scale systems sustainably through automation and evolve systems by pushing for changes that improve reliability and velocity.
  • Environment Troubleshooting: Troubleshoot environments as problems arise, test fixes, and perform follow-ups to ensure problems have been adequately resolved.
  • CI/CD Framework Design: Design and build the continuous delivery framework and tools and act as subject matter expert on CI/CD for developer teams.
  • Scalability Planning Evaluation: Evaluate performance trends and expected changes in demand and capacity, and establish the appropriate scalability plans.
  • AWS Modeling Design: Design methods and modeling for AWS applications along with compute, network, and storage.
  • Automation Script Development: Develop, support, and create Chef, Ansible, and Terraform scripts to automate deployment.