Cloud Architect: Skills & Responsibilities

With Cloud technologies showcasing a mushroom growth in the IT world and all the types of organizations (whether financial, manufacture or retail etc) moving the workloads to cloud, buffet of new roles and responsibilities have spun up to manage and solution on Cloud platforms. One such primary role is that of Cloud Architect.
Cloud Network including front backend systems, servers, storage and management platforms combine to make up a Cloud computing architecture. A Cloud Architect, who is also an IT specialist, is responsible for deploying an organizations cloud computing strategy. This also includes plans of cloud adoption, application design in cloud and its management and monitoring. Cloud architects oversee application architecture and deployment including migration in the cloud environments.

A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electronics & Communication, Information Technology or relevant field is an essential requirement to qualify for the job role. Further, atleast 5 plus years of experience in designing, implementation and supporting IT cloud solutions is an essential ask in many interviews.

Key responsibilities of Cloud architect:

On a very high level, a Cloud Architect is responsible for converting the technical (both functional and non-functional) requirements of a project/program into architecture by designing it into a final workable solution. Below list encapsulates the responsibilities associated with a Cloud Architect role:

• Produce cloud strategy and manage the implementation of the strategy.
• Periodically assess and evaluate cloud applications including hardware and software.
• Designing and provisioning Cloud environment to meet company’s functional and non-functional requirements.
• Provision and organize cloud systems.
• Understand company’s cloud privacy and also work closely with IT security team.
• Respond to technical issues in a professional and timely manner.
• Responsible for planning and designing of cloud environment.
• Make sure the Cloud setup works with full efficiency and is up to date with usage of resources in cloud.
• Responsible for integration of 3^rd party or new application to Cloud environment
• Steering migration of services or work stack to Cloud environment.
• Introduction of tools for Cloud management
• Provisioning, maintenance, monitoring and management of cloud Infrastructure.
• Understand present and future business needs and implementing the cloud strategies in accordance to those needs.
• Providing training and mentoring to other roles engaged in end to end lifecycle of cloud structure.
• Assess the best cloud architecture solutions and propose the same to meet the strategic requirements of the company.

Skills required for a Cloud architect:

There are variety of technical and nontechnical skills which are required from cloud architect. The role also necessitates good collaboration skills in order connect with other architecture roles in the organization. Below are the key skills which make up a Cloud architect:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer Science, Electronics & Communication or equivalent field
• Skills in programming languages such as Python, Ruby and Elixir
• Automation and Orchestration
• Background of IT engineering
• Solid people management skills
• Superb leadership skills
• Thorough understanding of information and infrastructure Security
• Good written and verbal communication
• Good acquaintance with one or more operating system like Linux, UNIX, Solaris, Ubuntu and Windows OS.
• Good experience in designing and implementation cloud infrastructure, platforms and applications.

Cloud Certifications:

In order to be proficient architect, one needs to certify and have thorough understanding in Public Cloud setup link AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba and OCP. Some of renowned Cloud Architect certifications are as under:

• AWS Solutions Architect – Associate Certification for AWS
• Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect
• Google Cloud Platform Solution Architects
• IBM Certified Solution Architect – Cloud Platform
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Associate Certification

Related – Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer

Conclusion:

Cloud Architect is a very coveted white collar role and many Public Cloud providers and organizations are in lookout for candidates with such skills and expertise. Future is pretty bright for such resources, since due to colossal success of cloud platforms, future growth in this domain will be exponential and an important role responsible for realizing this construct in the Cloud is that of a Cloud Architect.