Ever wondered who builds and maintains all the infrastructure that keeps your favourite apps and websites running in the cloud? That's the job of a Cloud Engineer!
It's a highly rewarding career where you get to solve interesting problems, work with cutting-edge technology, and earn a seriously impressive paycheck while doing it.
Thinking about making the move? Well, you're in the right place!
In this guide, I'll walk you through exactly what a Cloud Engineer does, the skills you need, and the fastest path to landing the job.
You'll be surprised how achievable it is, so let's dive in...
How to become a Cloud Engineer without a degree!
Just a quick heads up. This guide is based on our Cloud Engineer career path:
Become a AWS Cloud Engineer
11 milestones 9 courses
Step-by-step roadmap where you'll learn to code and build a portfolio.
Curated curriculum of courses, workshops, challenges, projects, and action items.
Become a AWS Cloud Engineer from scratch and actually get hired.
Earn on average per year:
$154,788
US salary data collected from Indeed, LinkedIn, and Web3.career 2026.
In the future, feel free to check that and follow along as a fast-track cheat sheet.
For now, though, keep reading as I'll go into more detail around each step, as well as how long it'll take to learn each part, based on the average completion time of our students.
That being said, there is one thing you can do to cut this learning time down considerably...
Optional step. Speed up your learning
Because you're going to be learning a lot of new skills, I recommend taking a slight detour and checking out this guide or, better still, this course:
![Learning to Learn [Efficient Learning]](https://images.ctfassets.net/aq13lwl6616q/6VWcUgLgG0SU55ORlILe2S/e186361aeb48561bcd19ae6486577022/Learning_to_Learn.jpg?w=1200&h=672&q=50&fm=webp&bg=transparent)
Average time to learn: 5 days
It will teach you how to learn using concepts you've never heard of before.
Why care?
Because it'll help you learn faster, which will then reduce the total time it takes you to learn all these other skills you'll need. (It's kind of like stopping the car to fix a flat tire, because you know it will make the whole journey much quicker and smoother).
Then, once you’ve gone through that course and figured out how to learn faster, you can jump into learning all the skills to become a Cloud Engineer at a more accelerated pace.
Step #1. Learn the core cloud skills
Unlike some other tech roles, Cloud Engineer isn't typically an entry-level position. Most people come to it having already worked in a related role like a sysadmin, DevOps engineer, or general IT role, and then specialise in cloud.
That said, if you're starting from scratch, this path will show you how to get there.
Learn Cloud fundamentals
AWS is the world's largest cloud provider, powering everything from Netflix to NASA, and it has the largest market share of any cloud platform by a significant margin. That means most companies hiring Cloud Engineers are hiring specifically for AWS skills, so this is where you want to start.
Go ahead and take my course so you can pass the AWS practitioner exam:
Estimated Time Required For This Step: 18 days.
Passing this particular certificate is great because you'll learn the basics of working in the cloud at the same time, as well as start to understand why companies are moving everything there.
You'll also be able to get a grasp on the core AWS services that power most real-world infrastructure, such as EC2, S3, and RDS, as well as how to keep systems secure and how to manage cloud costs.
Oh wow, budgeting you say! How exciting...
I know, I know, but the thing is, the engineers who can optimise cloud spend are genuinely hard to find and well compensated for it, which is why you need to know it.
Learn advanced Cloud Engineering
The Cloud Practitioner certification is a great start, but it's essentially a foundational qualification. To get hired as a Cloud Engineer, you need to be able to actually design and build real cloud infrastructure, and that's exactly what the AWS Solutions Architect certification is for:
Estimated Time Required For This Step: 28 days.
This is where things start to get really interesting for your career, because while the Cloud Practitioner teaches you what the cloud is, this course teaches you how to actually use it.
You'll get into the real stuff that engineers deal with every day:
How do you build a system that doesn't fall over when traffic spikes?
What happens when a server goes down at 2am?
How do you store and move data at scale without it costing a fortune?
Etc
At this point, you've built a solid understanding of AWS and how cloud infrastructure is designed.
However, Cloud Engineers don't just design infrastructure. They also deploy, manage, troubleshoot, and automate it. So before you start applying for jobs, it's worth building some practical experience with those skills.
Step #2. Build a portfolio to prove you can do the work
Here's the thing about tech jobs that catches a lot of people off guard, and it's the fact that tech companies don't really care about your qualifications.
What they care about is whether you can actually do the work, and the way you prove that before you've had the job is with a portfolio.
So before you start applying, you'll want to make sure three things are in order.
Your LinkedIn profile is up to date and looking professional
You have a one-page resume ready to go
And you have a portfolio of project work that shows what you can do
You'll have completed some practical exercises in the previous two AWS courses, so feel free to include relevant examples of your work in your portfolio.
Then go a step further and complete this project, and add it in also:
Average time to learn: 1 day.
This project has you building a complete end-to-end web app using five different AWS services:
Amplify
Lambda
IAM
API Gateway, and
DynamoDB
Why bother to make this?
Simply because it's the kind of thing that makes a hiring manager sit up and pay attention, because it shows you can combine multiple services together into something real, which is exactly what the job involves.
Step #3. Apply for Cloud Engineer jobs
Alright, now it's time to apply for jobs and get hired!
If you're a ZTM member, then I HIGHLY recommend you check out Andrei's new course on getting hired at your dream job:
Average time to learn: 12 days.
He covers the entire application and interview process in detail, including his technique, where he gets a 90% interview success rate!
Trust me, you'll never feel 100% ready, but that doesn't mean you should wait until you've mastered every cloud technology before applying for jobs.
Start looking for opportunities that match your current skills, including junior cloud roles, cloud support positions, and related infrastructure roles. You'll learn a lot from the application and interview process, even if you don't land your ideal role immediately.
And remember, you can keep building your skills while you're applying, which brings us to the next step.
Step #4. Continue building your Cloud Engineering skills
While you're applying for jobs, you can continue building your skills and exploring other areas of cloud computing.
Two particularly useful areas to focus on are AI infrastructure and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
Learn AI Engineering with AWS SageMaker
As more companies build AI-powered applications, they need engineers who understand how to run machine learning workloads in the cloud.
Amazon SageMaker is an AWS service that helps teams build, train, and deploy machine learning models without having to manage all the underlying infrastructure themselves.
In this course, you'll learn how to prepare datasets, train and fine-tune models, and deploy them using AWS SageMaker and Hugging Face.
Average time to complete: 28 days.
These skills are particularly useful if you want to work with companies building AI applications or managing machine learning infrastructure on AWS.
Learn Terraform & Infrastructure as Code
Another important skill for Cloud Engineers is Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Rather than manually configuring servers, networks, and other cloud resources, IaC lets you define your infrastructure using configuration files that can be version-controlled, reused, and automated.
Terraform is one of the most widely used tools for this, and it works across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
In our Terraform Bootcamp, you'll learn how to provision and manage infrastructure using Terraform, making it easier to deploy consistent environments, automate changes, and manage cloud resources at scale.
Average time to complete: 20 days.
Combined with your AWS knowledge, Terraform gives you another valuable skill for managing real-world cloud infrastructure.
Start learning Cloud Engineering today!
So there you have it. A step-by-step guide to building the skills you need to become a Cloud Engineer.
If you've already got some DevOps or Sysadmin experience under your belt, you could be ready to start applying for relevant cloud roles within a few months. If you're starting from scratch, expect the journey to take longer as you build your technical skills and practical experience.
P.S.
Want some good news?
All the courses I've mentioned in this guide are included in a single Zero To Mastery Academy membership. So once you join, you'll have access to all of this and can get started right away.
Plus, as part of your membership, you'll get to join me and 1,000s of other people (some who are alumni mentors and others who are taking the same courses as you) in the ZTM Private Discord:
Ask questions, help others, or just network with other Cloud Engineers, students, and tech professionals.
Make today the day you take a chance on YOU. There's no reason why you couldn't be applying for jobs in just a few months from now!
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