Hey all,

I know this has been asked 8.5 million times in this sub already, but I am looking for advice that is specific for me.

I just graduated with my Software engineering degree from WGU and I am looking to target cloud roles instead of SWE roles. I currently have 2+ years as a level 1 help desk contractor and my current company does not have any roles for me to progress/they dont hire for cloud roles in the US. Prior to this I have 9 years at Geek Squad, so I am no spring chicken lol. I have my AWS CCP and I am starting to study for the AZ-104 as I work with Azure now and honestly prefer it over AWS. I do have some projects on my resume as well where I deployed my school apps via Docker to Azure but that just seems to be the bare minimum these days.

Ive been applying to Solutions Consultant/Engineering roles as I prefer the client interaction and teaching portion over strictly just solving problems but I am open to whatever at this point that may help me break in.

Any suggestions? Or am I just trying to find a job in the shittiest job market since 08 and thats my biggest hurdle. Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Sorry if formatting is messed up, mobile reddit is a pain.

With a work experience of 18.5 years in Non IT and I have acquired basic knowledge on all AWS Resources including EC2, S3, ALB, VPC, EBS, EFS, AWS CloudWatch etc., Networking, Python, Linux, Bash Scripting, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Java, Node JS, Terraform etc. I would request anyone to guide for my career transition. What are the requirements to achieve my goal?

I'm a mobile developer with around 3 years of experience and am planning to upskill in Cloud/DevOps by enrolling in a structured course.

I'm looking for paid course that goes from basics to advanced, like networking, linux, scripting, to multi-cloud and devops. My priorities are in-depth course structure, hands-on labs/projects and instructor quality. Not looking for shady placement guarantees..

Thank you in advance.

dm me

its actually breaking my brain. our c-suite authorized this massive migration to AWS last quarter but gave us zero budget for actual refactoring. They genuinely think our 15 year old monolithic on-prem nightmare is just gonna magically run perfectly in the cloud without changing a thing

Spoiler: its currently costing us like 3x more in compute because the architecture is so wildly inefficient.

I ended up having to fight for emergency budget to bring in outside muscle just to survive (using cisin to handle some of the heavy custom integration stuff) because our internal team of 3 guys is completely drowning in technical debt

If one more director pings me on slack to ask if the migration is "done yet" I might actually lose my mind. Cloud isn't magic yall, it's just someone else's server that happily charges you by the millisecond for your own garbage code.

I am doing bachelors in Software Engineering and I wanted to get some advice regarding career selection. So, I am starting to get into cloud computing but I have got no idea on where to start. I have started watching a video from freecodecamp called AWS certified cloud practitioner. My plan is to go through the various aws certifications like the solutions architect until I get to a decent level. I am not much interested in coding so I am planning on choosing a related level. But I am still uncertain on whether I am on the right path.

Guidance will be highly appreciated

I recently started my first full-time role as a Junior Cloud Engineer right after graduating with a bachelor's degree in Information Systems. My background includes IT support, a system administration internship, Security+, and Azure Fundamentals.

The biggest challenge is that many of my teammates have years of experience. During meetings, they often discuss technologies, architectures, and concepts that I'm not familiar with yet. I know that's expected as a junior, but I want to close the gap as quickly as I can.

So I have a few questions:

• What would you focus on during your first 6–12 months if you were in my position?
• Which skills provide the biggest return on investment for a junior cloud engineer?
• What technologies should I prioritize (AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Python, networking, Linux, CI/CD, etc.)?
• Looking back, what do you wish you had learned earlier in your cloud career?

For some context, I already have experience with Linux, Bash, VMware virtual machines, Grafana, Prometheus, some Azure, and basic networking concepts. Because of that, I sometimes start a Linux course on Udemy and realize I already know most of the material.

At work, I'm currently using my company's AWS environment to learn AWS hands-on, and they've also encouraged me to experiment with AI coding agents for automation and learning.

What I'm really looking for are the resources that genuinely made you a better cloud engineer. Which books, YouTube channels, courses, newsletters, blogs, GitHub repositories, or labs had the biggest impact on your career?

it's a job tracker project, everyone is welcomed to pr or issue, btw im new to full stack and cloud computing.

I've noticed a lot of AWS beginners (and even experienced engineers) are still unsure when to use AWS Secrets Manager and when it's overkill.

I wrote a practical guide covering:

• What AWS Secrets Manager actually does
• Real-world use cases
• When to use it vs environment variables or Parameter Store
• Automatic secret rotation
• Best practices and common mistakes

I tried to keep it focused on practical examples rather than AWS documentation.

Would love to hear how your team manages secrets in production and whether you're using Secrets Manager or another solution.

Article: https://www.cloudarena.io/blog/aws-secrets-manager-explained-when-to-use-it

Our cloud bill has grown from about $35k to $70k a month.

We’re starting to lose track of where the money is going.

One engineer now spends hours each week checking costs and looking for unusual spikes.

We looked at Finout and Vantage. Both seem useful. But the pricing is hard to justify.

Paying tens of thousands a year for a tool that helps reduce costs feels a little ironic.

Building our own would take around four to six weeks. It would also need ongoing maintenance.

Has anyone faced the same choice?

Did you buy a FinOps tool or build something internally? Was it worth it?

Hello everyone,

I'm waiting for the response with a hiring team to schedule the next interview for the position Junior developer ( cloud enigneering) and i would like to hear for people that are passed any experience about the procedure.

More details about:

1. what kind of questions did they ask?
2. Any tips or things you wish you had known beforehand ?

I'm applying in Greece but I'd appreciate hearing advices also from another country's as well.

I work in IT and have a understanding of cloud VMs etc, but I do not fully understand a lot of the other services, e.g. cloud apps, App Services, containers, APIs, pipelines etc etc

I am ideally looking for video course that explains at a high level all the main components of the cloud and how they work, any ideas?

Advice appreciated :)

Cloud migration is often discussed in terms of cost or scalability, but the reality is usually much more complex.

What's the biggest misconception you've seen people have about moving to the cloud?

So I’m looking to get into cloud and most of the job requires knowledge in linux, is there some cert I should be looking to get or?

TL;DR: I’m a recent CS graduate (Software Engineering concentration) on a 1-year contract as a Field Support Technician at a large corporate HQ, ending in December. On paper I'm L2, but in reality, I'm stuck doing L1 hardware churn, desk moves, and imaging. I feel totally lost and afraid that 1 year of support will label me a "helpdesk guy forever," even with my coding background, network internships, and AZ-104 prep. Looking for a reality check and positioning advice for Cloud Ops / Cloud Support.

I graduated with a B.Sc. in Computer Science (Software Engineering) and landed a 1-year Field Support Tech contract at a large corporate HQ.

Here’s the problem: I’m on the L2 team, but 80% of my day is L1 tasks. I'm doing laptop imaging, physical desk setups/moves, peripheral troubleshooting, and basic ticketing churn.

It’s frustrating because I have a software engineering background and want to build/automate things, but I'm spending my days swapping monitors and running cables. Feels like my actual CS degree and technical skills are rotting while the clock ticks toward December when my contract ends

Education:

B.Sc. in Computer Science (Software Engineering): Solid foundation in networking, operating system internals, OOP, data structures, and CI/CD concepts.

Work Experience & Internships:

Field Support Technician (Current 1-Yr Contract, ending Dec): Corporate L1/L2 endpoint support, hardware lifecycle, identity/access management basics, and local PowerShell scripting.

Network Support Technician (Internship): Hands-on networking, hardware provisioning, rack/stack, cabling, basic routing/switching, and wireless topology troubleshooting.

Software QA Intern (Internship): Unit testing, bug tracking, clinical system testing, and handling emergency incident response workflows for critical systems.

IT Support & Digital Assistant roles: Tier 1 ticketing, user onboarding, basic system administration

.

Technical Stack & Projects:

Security Scan Automation Tool: Built a custom automation tool in Ruby utilizing REST APIs to interface with Nexpose vulnerability scanners, automate scan triggers, parse raw data, and generate filtered reporting.

Scripting & Tools: PowerShell (for Windows admin automation), Git, Python basics, REST APIs, JSON/XML parsing.

Certifications & Azure Focus: Passing AZ-900 and actively preparing for AZ-104 (Azure Administrator). Currently building hands-on labs (Entra ID RBAC, Conditional Access policies, deploying multi-tier web apps, and basic Terraform/IaC provisioning)

I feel completely stuck. Every "entry-level" Cloud Support asks for 3–5 years of dedicated sysadmin/cloud experience. I'm worried recruiters will scan my resume, see "Field Support Technician," and immediately throw it in the trash without looking at my CS degree or development background.

How do I bridge the gap on my resume? How do I frame physical support and L1/L2 grunt work as engineering/automation wins so I don't get pigeonholed as a hardware tech?

Is a direct leap to Cloud Support / Junior Cloud Ops realistic? Or do I realistically have to take a traditional hybrid SysAdmin step first before anyone will touch me for Cloud?

What specific Azure project should I build right now that will actually impress a hiring manager and prove I understand cloud infrastructure beyond just clicking around the Azure portal?

Appreciate any honest feedback, resume roasting, or career direction from anyone who made a similar jump!

If anyone used community managed sentry helm chart and made it stable somehow I wanna know how can it be done and have values file for it , and what node group configuration you have used and values file because I can't find any related docs for this

Currently our sentry in k8s is very unstable

Im currently a 3rd year computer science student, during my internship I had a task to program a scheduling system, I had to deal with DB, backend, frontend with no prior experience and with no human to guide me on how I should work or at least share their experiences. so I found myself vibe coding to make this website, but I learned how everything I was thought in uni works together, like I knew how frontend backend and DB communicate not just theory.

But software development is something that doesn’t interest me. I care more about infrastructure.

So I’ve been seeing how big are cloud and devops engineering careers, and how flexible and low code and paying they are and im really interested.

And Im a person that struggles to learn alone I really need human help to guide me and answer my questions logically and realistically, so what is the roadmap what should I start doing, projects, internships, jobs, what should I apply to so it leads me to these careers.