Cloud Engineer
You design and run the infrastructure that applications live on, in code rather than by hand.
No degree needed Harder — this is a mid-tier role and we are not going to pretend it is an entry point.
Can I actually do this?
Not a first job. The honest route is help desk or cloud support first, then this. Direct entry happens with strong project evidence, not with a certificate alone.
Who it suits. People who would rather automate a task than repeat it, and who are comfortable being responsible for things that cost money while they sleep.
Runway. Realistic after cloud support or sysadmin experience plus an Associate-tier certificate and real project work.
Coming from cloud support or networking? That is the expected path — this role is a promotion, not a career change. Cloud Support Network Administrator
Also advertised as
The route
Four stations, in order. Each one is a thing you finish before the next matters.
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Station one
Learn it free
Only the best few, deliberately. Every one of these is free to use — the pill on each card says exactly what is and isn't free.
AWS Skill Builder free tier
Free to learn · no certificate
Official free training tier. Paid tiers exist alongside it; only the free tier is counted here.
Verified 2026-07-25
Microsoft Learn: Azure Administrator (AZ-104) learning path
Free to learn · no certificate
Free interactive path plus official practice assessments, straight from the credential's own page.
Verified 2026-07-26
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Station two
Attest strategically
Pick the ecosystem your target employers actually run, then take that one Associate-tier exam. If the choice is genuinely open, note that Azure renews free every 12 months while AWS requires a paid exam again every 3 years — the long-run cost differs sharply.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Amazon Web Services · SAA-C03
Free to learn · paid certificate Recognized
The honest cost Cost Not published
AWS does not print the exam fee on this page, and it is still absent when the page is fully rendered in a browser — so this is a genuine omission, not a JavaScript artefact. Check the AWS certification portal before booking.Validity 3 years — stated verbatim on the official page. Renewal Recertify before expiry by passing the latest version of the exam. Assessment Proctored exam Proctored Yes Verify via Credly Cost per active year Unknowncannot be computed — AWS does not print the exam fee on this page The most widely requested AWS credential in cloud engineering postings, a clear step above the entry-level Cloud Practitioner.
Read this before you buyThis is the step up from Cloud Practitioner, not a parallel option. Earning both at entry level signals little that the Associate alone does not.
Verified 2026-07-28 · Official page
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
Microsoft · AZ-104
Free to learn · paid certificate Recognized
The honest cost Cost $165
$165 USD, and Microsoft states the price varies by the country or region in which the exam is proctored. The figure is rendered by JavaScript, so it is invisible to a plain fetch — recovered with a headless browser on 2026-07-28.Validity 12 months, then renewable indefinitely at no cost. Renewal Renew every 12 months by passing a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn. No fee, no continuing-education units. Assessment Proctored exam Proctored Yes Verify via Credly Cost per active year $0$165 once, then $0/yr — renewal is free, so cost per active year tends to zero The core Azure operations credential, at the tier employers actually hire for rather than the Fundamentals tier.
Read this before you buyBest long-run economics of any paid certificate on this site: you pay once and renew free forever, versus AWS and Google Cloud which both require a paid exam again every three years.
Verified 2026-07-28 · Official page
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Station three
Prove it
A certificate says you passed a test. These say you can do the job.
Everything in code
Rebuild a working environment entirely from Terraform or Bicep — network, compute, storage, permissions — then destroy and recreate it from scratch to prove it is reproducible.
A pipeline that actually deploys
Wire a CI pipeline that tests and deploys on merge, with a documented rollback you have really executed at least once.
A cost and failure write-up
Document what your environment costs per month and what happens when a component dies. Engineers who think about the bill and the blast radius are rarer than engineers who can deploy.
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Station four
Get hired
Search these exact titles
Who hires for this. Product companies running their own infrastructure, cloud consultancies and partners, managed service providers, financial services.
The infrastructure-as-code repository is the portfolio. A public repo that provisions a real environment does more here than any certificate, because it is the actual work.
On salaryWe don't publish salary estimates. Numbers copied between blogs drift from reality, and a wrong number costs you real negotiating power. When we have a verified public source, it goes here with its date.
Where this route continues
- AI Infrastructure Engineer — toward GPU clusters and training
- MLOps Engineer — toward models in production
- AI Platform Engineer — toward building internal platforms
- Network Administrator — sideways move
This page last verified 2026-07-26 · How we verify
Credential pages for AWS SAA and AZ-104 fetched live 2026-07-26 (HTTP 200); validity and renewal terms quoted from each vendor's own page.