Cloud Engineer – Roles and Responsibilities

Cloud engineers have become a vital part of many organizations – orchestrating cloud services to create seamless digital experiences for clients. With responsibilities spanning across cloud security to troubleshooting incidents, cloud engineers are key to keeping modern businesses running efficiently. And as the need for cloud expertise continues to rise, so do opportunities in the field. For those looking to enter the profession, this blog dives into the roles and responsibilities of a cloud engineer and best practices for cloud engineering teams. 

What is a Cloud Engineer?

A cloud engineer is an IT professional responsible for designing, managing, and maintaining cloud-based systems and infrastructure. They are an integral part to any tech team, setting up virtual servers, managing databases, optimizing cloud performance, and handling the security of cloud systems. Ultimately, they ensure that clients needs are met and that their cloud services are running smoothly and securely. 

Cloud Engineer – Roles and Responsibilities

While the responsibilities may differ between organizations, many cloud engineers’ roles and responsibilities stay the same, and include:

Cloud Architecture Design – Cloud engineers design scalable, flexible, and reliable cloud-based solutions for their clients. They must evaluate the organization’s needs and correctly select and configure cloud services to meet those needs. So, cloud engineers require an in-depth understanding of cloud platforms and the applications they support to ensure that they can effectively migrate their clients’ systems to the cloud. 

Cloud Deployment – They also deploy and configure cloud resources, like setting up virtual machines, databases, storage systems, and other services on cloud platforms including AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Cloud systems must effectively be configured to communicate with each other. So, cloud engineers must be thoroughly informed about the dependencies and intricacies of the solutions they create.

Cybersecurity Management – When deploying cloud solutions, cloud engineers must ensure the security of those solutions. They are tasked with implementing security measures, such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access controls to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance with their client’s security regulations. 

On-Call Duties – Cloud engineers optimize their cloud monitoring systems by setting thresholds and identifying potential threat patterns. When these monitoring tools detect an incident based on these configurations, cloud engineers are required to be available to respond and rectify the issue at any time. So, they are often placed on-call ensuring that critical incidents are always immediately remediated. 

Troubleshooting – In the case of an incident, cloud engineers must quickly restore normal operations and minimize downtimes. These incidents can include performance degradation, service outages, or security breaches. Oftentimes, they implement alerting solutions that integrate with their monitoring tools so that they are always made aware of potential issues as they occur. 

Collaboration – Cloud engineers also collaborate with clients and their teams to ensure that the cloud solutions fulfill their organizational needs. This can include setting up Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipelines or working with security and compliance teams so that the cloud infrastructure is complying with the organization’s standards and regulations. 

Best Practices for Cloud Engineers

Cloud engineers must ensure that they are creating seamless and secure cloud solutions that maintain optimal performance 24/7. By following these best practices, they can effectively perform their duties and deliver high-quality cloud services: 

Adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – Cloud engineers should use tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or Azure Resource Manager to automate and standardize cloud deployments. This lets engineers manage and provision cloud resources through code for easier scalability, flexibility, and replication. 

Optimize Cloud Costs – Cloud costs can spiral out of control if not closely monitored, so cloud engineers must employ solutions to ensure their costs are optimized. They can implement observability and monitoring tools that alert them when costs begin to spike. 

Employ Alerting Solutions – Whether its cloud cost spikes or performance degradation, cloud engineers must immediately be aware of any issues. So, many teams employ alerting tools that automatically deliver mobile alerts the moment their monitoring solutions detect an incident within the cloud system. 

Develop a Robust Business Continuity Plan – When an incident occurs, it’s not only crucial that cloud engineers are immediately notified of the issue, but they must also have a structured plan in place that allows them to act quickly to resolve the problem. Developing a business continuity plan that minimizes downtimes and ensures optimal performance of cloud services is essential to enhancing client satisfaction. 

OnPage for Cloud Engineering

OnPage empowers cloud engineers by orchestrating real-time incident alerts, enabling teams to mobilize promptly and resolve issues faster. Whether it’s cloud infrastructure management, optimization, or troubleshooting, OnPage ensures that engineers are instantly notified of critical events that have occurred, helping them proactively address incidents and maintain system reliability across cloud environments.

Here’s a closer look at the key features that make OnPage an essential part of their workflow:

High-Priority Alerting – OnPage delivers loud, distinguishable high-priority mobile alerts that even bypass the silent switch. Additionally, OnPage alerts are routed right to the on-call cloud engineer, every time, based on on-call schedules, ensuring their mobilization. 

Seamless Two-Way Collaboration – Cloud engineers work alongside multiple teams and must be able to easily collaborate on cloud projects. So, with OnPage they gain access to seamless two-way messaging that enables role-based communication so that collaboration with the right teams is always just a click away. 

Robust Integrations – OnPage seamlessly integrates with virtually any monitoring system enabling cloud engineers to receive alerts immediately after an incident is detected.