Cloud engineers design, build and manage infrastructure on AWS, Azure and GCP. The UK faces a critical cloud skills shortage — certified engineers command salaries 30% above industry average.
Cloud engineers design and maintain the servers, databases and networks that power modern applications — but in the cloud rather than on physical hardware.
Architect scalable, fault-tolerant systems on AWS or Azure using services like EC2, S3, RDS and VPC.
Set up IAM roles, encryption, firewalls and audit trails to keep cloud environments secure.
Monitor usage, right-size resources and implement auto-scaling to keep bills low.
Write Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation) to provision environments in minutes.
This route takes most students 6–10 months working part-time alongside a job.
Foundation-level cert. Learn the core AWS services, pricing and support models. No prior cloud experience needed — the best starting point.
The cert that gets you hired. Covers designing distributed systems on AWS. Highly respected by UK employers — expect a 20–30% salary uplift.
Add Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines. Opens senior Cloud/DevOps roles at £65k–£85k.
Cloud engineering is one of the highest-paid IT disciplines in the UK.
| Level | Role | Typical UK salary |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Junior Cloud Engineer / Cloud Support | £35k – £45k |
| Mid | Cloud Engineer / AWS Engineer | £50k – £65k |
| Senior | Senior Cloud / Solutions Architect | £70k – £85k |
| Lead | Cloud Architect / Principal Engineer | £85k – £110k |
Most students land their first cloud role within 6–10 months. Pay monthly from £49.
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