The term ‘head in the clouds’ is no longer shorthand for those of the dizzy, distracted persuasion. In fact it has become just the opposite. Why? Because the cloud computing space continues to surpass all expectations, resulting in a cohort of IT experts at the top of their profession who are able to secure the highest salaries by looking towards the cloud space as a viable pivot option.

This view is backed by a recent study from Grand View Research which shows that in 2021 the cloud sector was valued at $368.97 billion and is estimated to grow to $483.98 billion by the end of this year.

A 31% increase year-over-year is impressive, but what’s more is that by 2030, the cloud space is expected to be worth a staggering $1.6 trillion, combining both C2B and B2B offerings. Gartner echoed this forecast with its own research, breaking it down even further and showing that Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) are the two areas expected to see the largest and quickest growth.

Day-to-day digitalisation

The World Economic Forum attributes this rapid cloud growth to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19-caused increase in the day-to-day digitalisation of our lives, which resulted in companies adopting cloud-based solutions much earlier than expected. Amazon WebServices remains the industry front runner, boasting a 37% increase in profit year-over-year. It’s followed closely by Google Cloud, which saw a 36% increase year over year; while Microsoft Azure shows continued growth, banking a 26% increase for the same period.

What does this mean for those working in IT? Professionals experienced with cloud technologies, certified to work with cloud providers and familiar with programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, and Python have been able to demand an average 4.3% salary increase annually, with that number expected to rise sharply as demand for their knowledge grows.

For those looking to move into the cloud space, experts suggest upskilling in data management, stating that those familiar with SQL, NoSQL, and Linux will have an advantage. When choosing specific roles to move into, consider that demand for cloud engineers increased 97% over the past year, and 150% increase in demand for cloud native engineers. Average salaries within the sector tend to start at $140,000 for cloud associates, rising to $235,000 for directors and executives.

We’ve found three exciting cloud computing roles below, and there are plenty more waiting to be discovered on the Finextra Job Board.

Data and Senior Data Engineer, Xero

The Role: A Data and Senior Data Engineer will engineer large and complex data sets, as well as building robust, reusable and optimised data pipelines. You will develop, administer, and operate data pipelines and data enrichment activities on an internal data platform.

The Responsibilities: You will collaborate with the team to help create and deliver beautiful software while contributing to cross-company discussions around technical, architectural, and process improvements.

The Requirements: You will be comfortable working with SQL, Snowflake, dbt, Python, AWS, AWS Serverless (Lambda Functions), SQS, -SNS, S3, Glue, Athena, Terraform, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines. You will also have familiarity with data integration tools (such as dbt) and data testing tools (example dbt expectations, deeq).

Apply for the Data and Senior Data Engineer role or investigate all vacancies at Xero.

Cloud Security Engineer, SurePay

The Role: A Cloud Security Engineer will support SurePay’s five engineering teams by continuously enhancing the level of security for its AWS production environment, getting an overview of the current SaaS solution and aiming to continuously improve it.

The Responsibilities: You will guide the teams to ensure proper designs and coding standards are implemented as well as investigating, creating, and recommending technologies within the security area.

The Requirements: You will need extensive experience with AWS, hardening and secure development standards as well as an in depth understanding of AWS Cloudformation, AWS CDK, and AWS ECS.

Apply for the Cloud Security Engineer role or explore other vacancies from SurePay.

Data Engineer, Blockchain

The Role: As a Data Engineer, you will be involved in all aspects of the data infrastructure, from understanding current bottlenecks and requirements to ensuring the quality and availability of data remains uncompromised.

The Responsibilities: You will collaborate closely with data scientists, platform, and front-end engineers, defining requirements and designing new data processes for both streaming and batch processing of data, as well as maintaining and improving existing ones.

The Requirements: You will have experience in designing, building, and maintaining a scalable and robust data infra that makes data easily accessible to the data science team and the broader audience via different tools.

Apply for the Data Engineer role and browse other opportunities at Blockchain.

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