Depending on who you listen to, you should be training as a machine learning developer, a cybersecurity technician or one of a dozen other occupations in the IT field. While it's true that the tech sector is experiencing one of the biggest explosions in history, it doesn't seem quite as obvious what position is the best for those who are trying to refocus their technical career.
In spite of what you might have heard, you might actually want to focus instead on the back-end development that powers all of this other technology. A career as a cloud architect might not be the most glitzy position, but it's going to put you right in the middle of the action and you may even be poised for some real growth in your career in the near future.
What a Cloud Architect Does All Day
Cloud computing forms the backbone of almost every other Internet-connected technology in use today. A cloud architect's job consists of developing the components that are needed to keep this backbone going. Since architects oversee the deployment of a specific company's cloud computing strategy, they might also end up authoring front end platforms and networking technologies.
Generally, companies will ask an individual to help them put together an adoption plan and stick to it. Best of all, you might not need all that much additional education to get started in the field.
Getting Certified as a Cloud Architecture Specialist
Considering the fact that so many companies heavily rely on Amazon Web Services, interested parties might want to first pursue an AWS certification to get a leg up on their competition. In most cases, you can finish a program in less than 140 hours, having taken less than 100 of these under the guidance of an actual instructor.
At the same time, you might want to take some time dedicated to learning a few extra programming languages. Coding skills are extremely important to anyone who works in cloud architecture. While other jobs might call for C or Swift, you're more likely to hear about cloud architects working with SQL.
Coding in the Cloud
Manipulating raw data is of vital importance for companies that are in the process of deploying a cloud database. As a result, SQL has found its way into almost every aspect of modern AWS and Microsoft Azure deployments. SQL coding is an in-demand skill for companies that use Google's cloud technology as well. That's not bad for a programming language that turns 50 in a few years.
R is also becoming extremely popular with those who work in the cloud computing world. It's been listed as one of the three main programming languages used by cloud developers, which is due in no small part to the fact that it enables them to manipulate mathematical data so easily.
While you're studying more about code and statistics, however, you won't want to forget about security. Even those who don't plan on becoming dedicated cybersecurity specialists can improve their resumes with just a few simple skills.
Securing the Cloud & Your Career
The high prevalence of ransomware attacks and other maladies have kept security in the mind of many individuals in the corporate world. As a result, you'll want to take an opportunity to bone up on security techniques before you dive headfirst into a job application. To give you some idea of how fast this segment of the market is growing, according to one CIO report, cloud architecture was among the 13 most in-demand technology positions last year.
Consider taking a few courses on firewall technology and network research. As this is a mission-critical issue, cloud data security experts are in great demand. An architect who knows a little about distributed encryption might find a lot of doors open as far as a potential career goes.
Many companies are transitioning toward open-source platforms, so taking a few classes in this field isn't a bad idea either. You might not think of devices like cloud-connected routers as requiring operating system support, but they actually need it because they're tiny self-contained general purpose computers.
Quite a few companies are transitioning toward BSD or even dealing with older platforms like HP-UX. Don't restrict yourself to working with just a single cloud deployment platform.
Make sure to compile a list of all your skills and promote yourself to potential employers that way. It may help you to land your dream job faster than you had ever thought possible.
