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What to Look For When Hiring an AWS Cloud Engineer

AWS Cloud Engineer

They say keeping your head in the clouds is a bad thing. Whoever came up with that idiom was unaware of the rise of cloud software that keeps valuable data stored for access. Today, it’s certainly an advantage to keep your head up there. 

While this cloud is a little less whimsical, it is still an extremely wondrous advancement in the age of technology. However, this technology still requires people with the skill to maintain it, and finding those qualified professionals can be a challenge if you do not know what to look for.

An AWS Cloud Engineer Should Be a Qualified Software Engineer

An Amazon Web Services cloud engineer, or AWS cloud engineer, is someone who will be dealing with cloud software. Despite the expanded functions of such software, it is still software. So, one thing to keep an eye open for when reviewing candidates for hire is their past experience as software engineers. Successful software engineers should be highly skilled at handling many tasks simultaneously and should possess strong problem-solving skills.

These skills should include analyzing data and understanding several programming languages that can be used to resolve errors. Additionally, the average software engineer should have insight into data structures and system design. An AWS cloud engineer will need to apply those same skills to the cloud network.

Able to Automate

Automation is essential for maintaining even simple networks.

It is simply not possible for anyone to maintain a network 24/7. And because of the abundance of tasks for which AWS engineers are responsible, it can be impossible for them to handle all the tasks at once. That is why a qualified AWS cloud engineer needs to be capable of automating certain tasks and aspects of the network maintenance so that more demanding tasks can be prioritized and successfully accomplished.

Without automation, AWS engineers will be less effective and overworked as they’re wasting valuable time and resources manually attending to the little details that could be resolved with implemented automation. There are several repetitive menial tasks for maintaining a network that could easily be replaced by simply writing a couple key lines of code.

Have A Deep Existing Understanding of AWS

This might seem like an obvious qualification, but sometimes candidates will try their luck applying to a role for which they are under qualified. To be certain, there are many tools that can be employed to test an applicant’s knowledge of AWS. But applicants without even a superficial understanding of AWS should likely be skipped over.

There will be exceptions, of course. Particularly talented software engineers could quickly learn about AWS on the job, but it is safer to opt for a candidate who has a fundamental understanding of AWS. 

Those candidates with at least some experience with AWS will be more effective in their role much faster since they will require less training.

Make Recruitment Simpler

AWS cloud engineers are essential to the continued functionality of the cloud networks used in professional settings. More and more people use the cloud to store their data. It could cause a major disruption with possibly very expensive consequences if the network goes down, or isn’t accessible.

AWS cloud engineers will need prior experience and software engineering skills to ensure that they can adequately tend to the system’s needs. However, knowing what you need from one of these professionals is not the same as knowing where to find one.

Fortunately, we at WideNet are here to help—we focus exclusively on recruitment for the tech and IT sector. If you need a new AWS cloud engineer, give us a call and see how we can help.