How to hire a good Cloud engineer – a complete guide

The cloud market is growing in leaps and bounds every day and cloud engineers are in great demand. Cloud computing is the future of technology. It’s here to stay for a long time and it’s something that you can’t ignore. If you are planning to stay in business in the coming years, you need to embrace the cloud.

According to reports from Flexera, 90% of businesses reported shifting to cloud usage during COVID-19. This scenario leads to an increase in demand for cloud engineers. If you want your recruiting business to grow smoothly, you need to hire a good cloud engineer.

It is not a cakewalk for cloud engineers to get a perfect job. They have to upscale their knowledge and skills to make themselves worthy in the competition. Nevertheless, the hiring process scrutinizes them in every aspect. It’s better to know how to hire cloud engineers. Testify can help you with their simplified tests.

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Who is a Cloud engineer?

As the name suggests, a cloud engineer is a person who knows how cloud infrastructure works. He is an IT professional who designs, manages, and maintains the cloud infrastructure. A good cloud engineer must have knowledge and a fair idea about how cloud technology works. They should be able to use cloud infrastructure, services, and tools for the betterment of the company.

Why do you need Cloud engineers?

Cloud engineers design and construct codes that work with cloud infrastructures. Cloud technology is growing in recent years. Clouds can store and back up their data in an efficient way. They can update their software on demand. Customers can access their services and products at their convenience.

To manage all the functions, companies need a dedicated cloud engineer. As mentioned earlier, cloud engineers work just like software engineers. They help in the design, application, and maintenance of the programming commands that will facilitate smooth cloud functions.

Day-to-day tasks of Cloud engineers

Cloud engineers’ tasks may vary according to various companies’ requirements. Some of their tasks are mentioned below.

• Migration of companies’ computer systems to the cloud
• Configuration of cloud services like networking and security
• Design and creation of cloud-compatible applications
• Management of cloud data and storage systems

What skills should cloud engineers have?

While hiring, you must work towards skills required by candidates applying for cloud engineer positions. As cloud engineers are responsible for software, design, architecture, and operational aspects, they should possess the following skills that will ease their job.

Hard skills

The main work of cloud engineers involves cloud infrastructure. Therefore, they should have expertise in cloud services and their tools. Along with that, they should also have good knowledge of software development, automation, visualization tools, etc. You can examine them for the below-mentioned skills.

Cloud computing competency

Cloud services provider

Good knowledge about the functioning of major cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Having this knowledge will benefit the company as cloud engineers ensure the best service provider for them. Understanding the current cloud market share can also help businesses make informed decisions when choosing between providers, based on reliability, global reach, and service offerings.

If you wish to pre-assess your candidates for their knowledge, you can use the AWS test library from Testlify.

Cloud storage

A good cloud engineer should be well-versed in cloud storage like S3 and Glacier in AWS; and Data Lakes, Blobs, and queues in Azure. They should be able to deal with all kinds of storage such as personal, private, public, and hybrid.

Cloud networking

Proper knowledge of automatic adjustment procedures is necessary for a good cloud engineer.

Cloud security

A cloud engineer should have expertise in maintaining cloud security and preventing cyber attacks.

Programming skills

As cloud infrastructure functions along with software development, a good cloud engineer should have well-versed programming knowledge like Python, Java, .NET, SQL, XML, etc.

Testlify has created a test library dedicated to gauge python knowledge of a candidate.

DevOps

A cloud engineer who works as both a software and operational engineer should have a fair knowledge of DevOps expertise. This expertise is essential for solving problems quickly.

Testilify have listed several pre-assessment tests that are specially developed to test the potential of candidates with good DevOps knowledge.

Web services and API

All cloud infrastructures are based on web services and API. Hence, cloud engineers should be well-versed in web services and API.

Security and disaster management

As mentioned before, cloud infrastructure is prone to cyber-attacks. Therefore, a cloud engineer should be an expert in maintaining security and developing implications that will prevent loss of data and services.

Containers

As per demand, a cloud engineer may need to move the entire data of the company from one cloud to another. Migration of data between different clouds is possible with containers. Hence, cloud engineers should be well-versed in the knowledge of containers.

Linux and microsoft services

Due to its easy customization, open-source availability, and high security, Linux is widely used in cloud infrastructure. Good knowledge of Linux and Microsoft services is essential for a good cloud engineer.

Soft skills

Apart from the domain knowledge, an ideal candidate should possess the following soft skills.

Collaboration skills

As for the job profiles, cloud engineers need to collaborate and work with different departments like software, business analysis, data science, etc. at a time. Thus, a good cloud engineer should be able to collaborate and work with multiple people.

Attention to detail

Cloud engineering needs accuracy to work as a system. A good cloud engineer should possess skills like attention to detail to avoid mistaking even a minute parameter.

Platforms like Testlify have designed specialized tests to gauge attention to detail skill while hiring new employees.

Updated knowledge of current trends

Cloud technology is constantly evolving. Thus, to match with the industry, a cloud engineer needs to learn fast and have awareness of current trends.

Payscale of Cloud engineers and job growth

According to Glassdoor, the average pay scale of a cloud engineer in the US is around $114,579. This range may increase with strong knowledge and experience.

In India, A survey report from AmbitionBox shows that cloud engineers have pay scale ranges between ₹3.0 lakhs to ₹12.5 lakhs per annum. Also, the average annual pay scale of cloud engineers is around ₹5.4 lakhs.

How to hire a Cloud engineer?

Online assessment

The best approach while hiring any candidate as a cloud engineer is to conduct online assessment tests. You may aim to hire a professional with the expertise and experience needed for cloud technology.

As a recruiter, you can choose these assessment tests from an online platform like Testlify. They provide a wide range of test libraries. You can even customize your online assessment using their platform.

During remote hiring, you can assess them effectively with image and video proctoring. These tests give statistical-based results that help recruiters with hiring decisions. If you are looking to hire developers in Colombia, Mexico, or other popular nearshore destinations, you can utilize nearshore software development companies. An assessment test could be crucial in terms of the recruitment process and further collaboration.

As a recruiter, you may face difficulty in assessing the cloud skills gap. Skills assessment tests provide problem-related solutions. As you can customize them, you can select the difficulty level and gauge candidates’ ability to handle difficult questions. This makes the hiring process of cloud engineers quite hassle-free.

Interview process

Though you assess candidates with an online assessment test, conducting interviews is an essential part of any hiring process. Interviews help in validating assessment test results and other non-technical skills of candidates. You can interview them by asking about;

• Open-source cloud databases
• Type of data used in cloud computing
• Different service modules used in cloud computing
• The benefit to organizations from cloud computing
• Security for data transport to the cloud

Apart from these questions, you can also ask them about the non-technical skills they have. This way you can assess both hard and soft skills.

Candidates often get confused about the job requirements for the roles of cloud engineers and cloud architecture. It is essential to know the difference between them.

Difference between Cloud engineer and Cloud architect

Though they both work on cloud computing, the job descriptions of cloud engineers and cloud architects are different.

Cloud engineer	Cloud architect
● Responsible for all aspects of cloud ● Construction of cloud-based server ● Management of meetings with managers and other staff ● Assessment of software needs ● Supervision of work of cloud architects	● Designers of cloud infrastructure ● Supervise the data transfer ● Maintain cloud-based services ● Installation and configuration of software ● Identification and correction of problems ● Manages migration schedules

Difference between Cloud Engineer and data engineer

Cloud engineers mainly work around designing, managing, and operating cloud infrastructure for a company. They are responsible for the migration of data and various software applications to the cloud. They are also responsible for designing and building various applications based on web services and the cloud.

On other hand, the main responsibility of data engineers is data retrieval. To grow your business, you need immense data. Data engineers work their way to retrieve, clean and reform data which can be used for various business models.

Difference between Cloud engineer and DevOps engineer

The following are the main differences between cloud engineers and DevOps engineers.

Cloud engineer	DevOps engineer
● IT professional who creates and maintains cloud infrastructure for a company ● The main focus is on cloud infrastructure and operations ● They are the subsets of DevOps engineers	● IT professional who creates and maintains cloud infrastructure for a company ●The main focus is on software  development, operations, and QA ● They are a superset of Cloud engineers

Final thoughts

To store data, around 85% of businesses worldwide use cloud technology. According to experts, the cloud computing industry will value at around $623.3 billion by 2023. If you are thinking of investing in cloud technology, you should hire a good cloud engineer. They are professionals who will help businesses to store their data and various web-based applications on a cloud platform. As cloud computing works on various verticals, you need to be cautious while hiring cloud engineers.

Testlify is an AI-powered online platform that helps recruiters with a wide range of skill assessment tests. These tests are highly equipped and serve the overall purpose.