As data is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity, the demand to access information without being confined to one location is growing. More companies are turning to cloud computing, which allows them to gain a competitive advantage and hire more engineers. In this article we will cover hard skills, job offers, and internship positions for cloud computing professionals.
According to the World Economic Forum report on the jobs of tomorrow, seven distinct professional clusters of future professions show the most promising outlook for growth in numbers of opportunities in 2020-2022. The seven clusters are care professions, data and AI, engineering and cloud computing, green professions, marketing: sales and content, people and culture, and product development. In this series we cover ways you can enter the job market in the field of your interest with the help of internships, scholarships, and gaining new skills through online courses.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the use of hardware and software to deliver a service over the Internet. With this, users can access stored information from any device. Email platforms like Gmail, cloud storage like Dropbox, and streaming companies like Spotify all use cloud computing to store files in the cloud so that users can access them via their accounts on any device.
Cloud software offers flexibility that enables different-sized businesses to adjust the cloud to their needs. Cloud solutions provide access to the infrastructure equivalent of a large corporate company on a small-business budget. Cloud software enables you to access your data, client information, and systems from anywhere, allowing you to work from anywhere.
Who Are Cloud Engineers?
A cloud engineer is an IT professional who is responsible for any technological duties associated with cloud computing. These include design, planning, management, maintenance, and support. Depending on the duties, the cloud engineer’s position can be broken down into multiple roles, including cloud architect, cloud software engineer, cloud security engineer, and cloud network engineer.
Typical job requirements for cloud engineers include having a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and experience in using Java, Python, C++ or Ruby. Cloud-related certification such as AWS Solutions Architect, Cloud Security Certification, and/or OpenStack Administrator Certification is a plus. It is advantageous to have experience working with open source technology, software development, system engineering, and scripting language as well as to demonstrate the following hard skills:
- Web Development
- Data Storage Technologies
- Software Development Life Cycle
- Computer Networking
- Human Computer Interaction
- Technical Support
- Digital Literacy
- Business Management
- Employee Learning & Development
To have a better understanding of the requirements and job conditions you will need to consider, let’s have a look at some of the job openings in the field of cloud computing.
Emerging Cloud Computing Jobs
The emerging sectors in cloud computing are those that have experienced the most growth over the previous five years. To arrive at these conclusions, LinkedIn and Burning Glass Technologies track the number of job openings posted in digital job boards and the number of professionals who are hired into new opportunities. Here are a few openings in this field:
Additional experience that you gain through your studies will demonstrate your work readiness to potential employers. To do that, consider applying for an internship or taking part in a computer science competition. Here is a taste of the opportunities you may look into:
Current university students are invited to apply for a remote part time internship at AINS, a US-based company that enables organizations to bring solutions to market quickly, digitize customer engagement, and automate processes across diverse lines of business. Interns will join the Software Development Team on either a part-time or full-time contract. Candidates are required to demonstrate Web Application development and C#/Java development experience. Interns will receive 30+ credits toward their Computer Science degree.
- Computer Science PhD Scholarship
The two-year international IBM PhD Fellowships include the following topics of particular interest: AI/Cognitive Computing, Cloud, Data Science, Internet of Things, Quantum Computing, and Security/Cyber Security. Fellowship recipients while in school will receive a competitive stipend for living expenses, travel, and the cost of attending conferences. All IBM PhD Fellowship awardees will be mentored by an IBMer in order to collaborate on a research or technology project for the duration of the award period and are strongly encouraged to do an internship during the first or second year of their award.
Cloud Computing Additional Learning Priorities
Data scientists at Coursera have looked at the learning activities of individuals employed in emerging professions and have created a list of distinctive priorities for up-skilling in those fields. Here are the five top courses to take as a supplement for anyone employed in cloud computing professions:
Deep Learning is one of the most highly sought-after skills in tech. In this course, you will learn the successful machine learning projects. You will learn about convolutional networks, RNNs, LSTM, Adam, Dropout, BatchNorm, Xavier/He initialization, and more. You will work on case studies from healthcare, autonomous driving, sign language reading, music generation, and natural language processing.
Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. In this class, you will learn about the most effective machine learning techniques, and gain practice implementing them and getting them to work for you.
This course covers the essential information that every serious programmer needs to know about algorithms and data structures, with emphasis on applications and scientific performance analysis of Java implementations. Part I covers elementary data structures, sorting, and searching algorithms. Part II focuses on graph- and string-processing algorithms.
In this four-course Specialization, you’ll explore exciting opportunities for AI applications. Begin by developing an understanding of how to build and train neural networks and improve a network’s performance using convolutions as you train it to identify real-world images. You’ll teach machines to understand, analyze, and respond to human speech with natural language processing systems.
As computer science positions are growing in number, more people are finding ways to enter the profession either through receiving further education or additional training to switch careers. Either way, the IT industry will accommodate skilled professionals from various backgrounds and provide opportunities for development and growth.
Photos: Shutterstock / Photomontage: Martina Advaney
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