The cloud — once a technology of the future — is now the standard in the IT world. Used by both young startups and huge enterprises alike, it brings new opportunities to the table and helps in solving issues known for years more easily.
What are some of the most important advantages of investing in a cloud platform?
- Improved scalability of digital products such as robust web apps.
- Support for continuous delivery and continuous integration — digital, online-based products can be updated faster and smoother.
- Better optimization of costs and space — servers are taken care of by the cloud service providers themselves.
- Easier (but still secure!) access to important company data from anywhere in the world.
- Amazing environment for distributed teams.
But how to establish your business on the cloud and leverage its full capabilities? In our guide below we explain why hiring cloud engineers is your best bet.
Why should you hire cloud engineers?
Many software developers nowadays have experience working on cloud platforms. So why should you hire specialized cloud engineers instead of relying on the team members you currently have?
Let’s consider what a cloud engineer does. In short, they plan out, design, manage and maintain your cloud services. They are responsible specifically for taking care of the cloud platform and integrating your product(s) with it.
In fact, in bigger companies, there are often teams of specialized cloud engineers, such as cloud architects or cloud security engineers. This is because cloud engineering itself is a vast area of IT development and correct maintenance of a cloud platform requires multiple tasks to be taken care of on a daily basis. If you leave these to the software developer themselves, the development of your product will go much slower.
In the end, should you decide to hire cloud engineers, you will benefit from faster product development, better performance of your cloud-based product and digital operations, lower chance of downturn, and significant cost saving in the long run.
The most important technical skills for cloud engineers
The first step to hiring the right cloud engineer is looking at the technical skills of your candidate. We list the most important ones below.
- Experience with relevant cloud platform(s)
There are multiple cloud solutions on the market — from those provided by huge IT giants (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) to those from companies focused fully on the cloud and often delivering services tailored to specific industries and/or use cases (such as Heroku which provides a cloud platform for web apps).
Your company will most likely need to choose one of these solutions and utilize it across your business. If you are unsure which platform is the best choice for you, we recommend you to contract a software consultant, or… hire cloud engineers and let them make the decision based on their experience. Be aware, however, that cloud engineers are most often specializing in one of the platforms and may be only partly familiar with the other ones.
- Knowledge of relevant programming languages
This one will highly depend on what language you are using to build your product. Popular languages used on the cloud back-end include Java, C#, Python, and a few other all-time favorites.
- Experience with relevant frameworks and libraries
Once again, this will depend on the stack you are currently using — as well as the cloud platform you pick. For example, most web apps utilize React or Angular on the front-end while the .NET platform is a must for Azure-powered businesses.
- Experience with database management
One of the most crucial areas of cloud engineering. Popular cloud platforms support all major database management technologies, including both SQL and NoSQL.
- Understanding of other crucial cloud operations
This includes areas like virtualization, containers, and security solutions (e.g. disaster recovery).
- Proficiency with Linux
Linux is commonly used in the cloud as — unlike Windows — it’s a free, open-source system. There is a high chance you will want to utilize Linux on your cloud, especially if you are a young startup with a limited budget.
- Understanding of DevOps
DevOps is a work methodology utilized by most IT product teams nowadays. The aim is to guarantee continuous delivery (CD) and continuous integration (CI) of new features — meaning new updates to the product are delivered on a very regular basis, sometimes even a few times per day. When you hire cloud engineers, you should remember to pick candidates who understand DevOps and have experience working in DevOps teams. Understanding of other major IT work methodologies, such as agile, Scrum, and Kanban, is also critical.
Level up with the right soft skills
Technical knowledge is, of course, a must for a cloud engineer, but so are the soft skills. This is because they influence how well the whole team operates — one approachable individual inspires everyone around.
People with what soft skills you should specifically look for when you want to hire cloud engineers?
- Attention to detail
To develop solutions that are reliable 24/7.
- Researcher attitude
To bring to the table innovative ideas that can take your product truly to the top.
- Analytical mind
To always take the importance of data into consideration.
Running a job interview with a cloud engineer
A technical job interview is one of the best ways to assess whether your cloud engineer truly has all the skills they claim to have. Such an interview will most likely cover the current technology stack of your company so make sure the interview is run by someone experienced with these technologies. This can be either a senior developer with cloud experience, another cloud engineer, a software consultant, or an IT project manager.
Below we list some of the questions that are often asked when hiring cloud engineers. However, be aware that these questions might differ in your case, depending on your preferred cloud platform and the rest of your tech stack. To make it uniform, we list questions mostly focused on AWS, as it’s the most popular cloud platform available.
- What are bad actors in AWS?
- In what case would you use the Classic Load Balancer and in what case the Application Load Balancer?
- AWS operates on a shared responsibility model. What does it mean?
- What is a Chef Workflow?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of using CloudFormation to manage resources?
- What advantages a NoSQL database has over SQL? How about the other way around?
- What is the Branch by Abstraction technique used for?
- What is, in your opinion, the optimal frequency of deployments? Why?
- Stored volumes vs cached volumes — what is the main difference between the two?
- What is fault tolerance? How do you achieve it?
Finding a cloud engineer that truly matches your business
While you are assessing the skills of your candidates, don’t forget also about checking how well they actually fit your company. Consider especially the following three areas…
- Product fit
Start with describing your product using very general categories, such as a web app or a mobile app. Then, narrow it down as much as possible — consider the features that make your product unique. Finally, explore your candidates’ portfolio and hire cloud engineers who have already worked on products similar to yours for improved work efficiency.
- Industry fit
If finding a cloud engineer with a matching product experience is not possible — or if you want to take the company fit to an even higher level — consider also the industry fit. Hire cloud engineers who have already experienced your market as they will most likely be familiar with the type of customer you are targeting and the typical technical obstacles for businesses like yours.
- Company culture fit
Combined with the right set of soft skills, a company culture match can significantly improve effectiveness and innovation across your whole team. How to achieve the perfect company culture match? Consider the core values of your company (e.g. management style, work environment style, diversity) and hire cloud engineers who also see them as important.
Who else do you need in your team?
A well-managed cloud platform can make a huge difference in how your product performs and help you significantly boost the user experience. But there are more areas besides cloud engineering that can help you truly power up your business. Consider hiring IT project managers, data scientists, UI/UX designers, or AI experts — they can all improve your product in completely separate fields.
How to hire cloud engineers and other experts fast? Get in touch with our consultants. At Ideamotive, we run an industry-leading network of IT talents from all specialties, including the most unusual ones. For the best results, we carefully review the profile and requirements of each company that gets in touch with us and connect them with experts who truly match their needs.
