Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer

Cloud has changed the way how we do Business. Cost savings have led the IT assets, especially compute Infrastructure migration to Cloud. Accompanied by this move, there have been buffet of new roles which have pretty promising future in Cloud Computing. Two of these very crucial roles are Cloud Engineer and Devops Engineer. While both the roles are imperative part of any Cloud environment, but differ in their responsibilities and scope of work.

Cloud Engineer work area is focused more around provisioning and maintaining of infrastructure and platform for the Public Clouds. To put it another way, they can also be called Infrastructure engineers of Public cloud providers.

The term Devops is short term for Development and Operations. The responsibility of Devops engineer remains around software development and its engineering to expedite the delivery of software applications and services.

Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer can be considered a subset of the DevOps Engineer. There is no mandatory requirement for Cloud engineer to be Developer, however Cloud certification becomes essential in order to enhance Cloud Infrastcrture and platform related skills. These professionals work in creating Public Cloud systems for enterprises to use them for communication and sharing of data, its storage, backup, including big-data analysis. In this role, the resource prepares architectures and platforms which would cater to diverse customer needs and their specific requirements. Scalability, high availability and redundancy considerations are also kept in mind while designing architectures. An interaction across teams is required to build the solution, including the platform on Cloud.

Responsibilities of a Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer’s responsibility can be described as below –

• Creating Cloud designs and solutions
• Protection of company confidential data over the cloud
• Update Softwares, drivers and firmware where required
• Ensure compatibility of all Operating systems
• Manage Cloud infrastructure

DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineers work in a collaborative way with operations and development teams with intension to release software products which are robust and within optimal time limits. In order to bring efficiency along with standardization of products, automation is another key scope Devops engineer needs to work on. This role also encompasses tracking the bugs in designs and also creation of automation opportunity for developers. Standard procedures may also be developed to achieve standardization and efficiency in product creation in addition to creation and maintenance of configuration.

Responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer

Devops Engineer’s responsibility can be described as below –

• Explore opportunities to automate things
• Using configuration tools like Puppet and Chef
• Monitoring security issues in Cloud
• Deployment and Maintenance of web applications
• Measuring application performance
• Application integration and testing

Key differences between Cloud Engineer and DevOps Engineer:

• Cloud Engineer is focused more on Infrastructure build and operations, while DevOps resource is dedicated towards development, testing and automation of tools and processes.
• Both the roles need atleast Bachelor’s degree to qualify for these job roles.
• The growth projection of DevOps engineer is pretty high (approximately 24%) in comparison to Cloud engineer (which is close to 6%). Though these figures are based on industry estimations and actuals may vary.
• Software Lifecycle management and Software development is primarily the forte for a DevOps Engineer, who also diligently follow Agile methodology. Cloud Engineer is more inclined towards Platform Designing and Infra designing to support robust Cloud setup of customers.

Comparison Table : Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer

Below table summarizes the difference between the two:

PARAMETERS	CLOUD ENGINEER	DEVOPS ENGINEER
Philosophy	Responsible for creating infrastructure and platforms that help individuals and businesses store and work with programs and data online.	Responsible for software development, engineering to expedite the delivery of software applications and services. Agile methodology is used in creation & testing during the lifecycle of software solution
Key Focus	Infra and Operations	Dev, Operations and QA
Scope	Infrastructure	Software methodology
Qualification	Bachelor’s Degree	Bachelor’s Degree
Job Growth projection	6%	24%
Software Lifecycle understanding	Less	Good understanding
Infra & Platform Designing	Yes	No
Software designing	No	Yes
Agile Methodology	Partially followed	Diligently followed

Download the comparison table here.

Continue Reading:

Cloud Architect vs Cloud Engineer

DevOps vs SRE

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