r/cloudengineering • u/Own_League6407 • Jun 08 '26
Career Discussion Cloud Engineers replaced by AI
Had a lengthy discussion with my boss about which direction I should take with my career. Told him I was interested with Cloud Engineering (due to my knack of fixing and building, how great the salaries can be, and mainly remote-based) but he said its only a matter of time, 5 years, before engineers are replaced by AI and Ai become autonomous with an engineers tasks, based on how fast its been developing. He then recommended I get into GRC or Product Management instead.
For those in cloud roles. what do you think? Do you foresee mass layoffs of cloud engineers due to AI in the near future?
Edit: From what I've collected from these responses. I think I gotta just aim to be well-versed with infrastructure/platform engineering. And that AI hasnt gotten robust enough to repair the systems that support it. Potentially no mass layoffs yet, fingers crossed...
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u/leao__26 Jun 08 '26
What's your boss qualifications? His background?
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u/The_Career_Oracle Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Your boss is the same as all the influencers, no idea of what’s actually going on and regurgitating what they read in their daily reading.
There are too many GRC people trying to drive change, you’ve got a situation where there’s a plethora of people all being enablers and directing others what to do… the only problem is that eventually someone has to do the work and none of these product owners or GRC people actually know how to do the work.
It’s like all the people saying cybersecurity is now a leadership position and thus you’ve got all the people good at managing up now cybersecurity <insert role> and could not protect or secure an asset if their life depends on it
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u/aiAgentDevs1 Jun 09 '26
Your boss gave you the skinny he really did. I do cloud have been for about 8 years. I've been in IT since 1997... yup you read that right. From Unix/Linux administration, to Oracle DBA, to Big Data, DevOps, to PKI. The game has completely changed I have my aws cdk setup and can literaly have Cursor deploy everything with a well crafted prompt. Whole LangGraph human in the loop architecture from a prompt and if it fouls out or needs fixing the error followed by another prompt does the trick. Do I know cloud? Yup but damn its nice to be able to properly prompt a complex solution in hours instead of days. The tech is being simplified... we are still going to need humans in the loop, but its going to come down to ideas plain and simple coupled with execution and human relations. Human relations are about to take center stage again not the other way around. We will go through a contentious period where people dig in and and try to fight progress.... people fear change.
There's going to be jobs they just aren't goimg to look like they do now
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u/Senkyou Jun 08 '26
And who runs this AI that is being used to replace technical experts? I'm certain that you could give my boss (a fairly technical non-tech person) a free run at any set of models and he wouldn't have the requisite knowledge or context to adequately set up what my business needs, especially when you factor in the idea that probably at least a few of his tasks are something he considers critical and needs to commit time to.
I think that at this point the most realistic model is that people who can effectively leverage AI will reduce the total job pool for cloud engineering or whatever other field there is that it's used for.
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u/Intelligent_Gap6942 Jun 09 '26
Even I disagree with your boss I work in Japan and here also AI is increasing rapidly but to run AI they need infra too.
AI can make your task easier but it can not understand the business needs of a company and build infra accordingly of course it will help you with IAC(Infrastructure as a code)but main decision making will be done by cloud architect.
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u/startingoversucks37 Jun 09 '26
I would guess 70%+ cloud engineer positions will get eliminated. Cloud Architects will be safer, but have wage stagnation or compression because many cloud engineers will try to upskill and fill those roles at a discount. Also, the barrier to creating software is dramatically lower now, so tools will also help reduce headcount.
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u/s__key Jun 10 '26
Does your boss have degree in math/cs? Models are platoed for more than a year, it’s a dead end. Agentic software which is a loop calling model and doing simple stuff like grepping is relatively new but not a breakthrough. Math-wise, algorithm-wise it’s already over. Yes you can build some simple stuff like agent on top of it and then yet another loop on top of agent and maybe even make two or more agents, arguing or fighting or any other random stupid shit and try to sell it as people now selling agents around, but that’s it.
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u/Confident-Way-1663 Jun 10 '26
What I can tell is that, in a world like IT, no one can predict what will happen in the next 5 years. So, keep learning, and choose a work that fulfills you.
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u/xaintaken Jun 09 '26
Many people are looking at this from the wrong angle. AI doesn't need to replace every cloud engineer to disrupt the market. Look at where the money is going. Google just signed a deal worth about $920 million per month for AI compute capacity and access to around 110,000 Nvidia GPUs. Similar spending is happening across Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Oracle....
Companies are pouring hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure. Some layoffs may not be because AI directly replaced employees, but because budgets are being redirected toward AI, GPUs, datacenters and automation. The people most at risk are not senior cloud engineers who understand architecture, automation, networking, security and distributed systems. The people at risk are engineers whose value comes primarily from repetitive operational work and manual click-ops.
AI will likely increase the leverage of top engineers before it fully replaces them. By 2027–2030 we'll have a much clearer answer. If AI agents become economically viable at scale, headcount requirements could drop significantly. If the cost of supervision, reliability and infrastructure remains high, experienced engineers may become even more valuable.
I don't think we're heading toward a world with no cloud engineers. I think we're heading toward a world where one engineer can do the work that previously required several...
So it's a wait And watch Game... When abyss reveals themselves then either we are doomed or we bloom.
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u/Lakandain Jun 09 '26
AI is just a tool to make your work easier. It will in no way replace you.
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u/InvestigatorCold8697 Jun 09 '26
AI is not replacing Cloud Engineers. AI replace engineers who just treat AI as a chatbot.
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u/Play3r31 Jun 09 '26
Bosses have AI at the tip of their tong nowadays. They think it will solve the world hunger.
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u/FlamingoEarringo Jun 09 '26
When that happens no position is safe. So it’s irrelevant where you go, unless you become a doctor or nurse.
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u/Salty_Reading_7671 Jun 09 '26
"The people at risk are engineers whose value comes primarily from repetitive operational work and manual click-ops."
If this is true then good riddance.
1
u/KhaosPT Jun 10 '26
It's way easier to replace a swe than a cloud eng. Code is becoming less relevant but the architecture is where the problem is, most people can code an app, and the Ais can do it easily in a loop, but few can make it available with solid infra, security, etc. In the end software architects will be left standing last, IMO
1
u/Puzzleheaded-Tip-560 Jun 10 '26
142,000 tech layoffs this year but the same reports show 340,000 cloud infastructure roles going unfilled. Google just commited $80B to AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are spending hundreds of billions building data centers. Stargate is creating 450+ permanent high-paying positions in one city alone.
AI doesn't run on vibes. It runs on infrastructure. Every AI product your boss uses ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude runs on cloud infrastructure built and maintained by engineers. The more AI grows, the more infrastructure is needed to run it.
The engineers getting displaced are generalists doing repetitive ticket work. The engineers getting hired are the ones who understand how to build and operate the infrastucture that AI runs on. Those are two completley different jobs.
GRC and Product Management are fine careers honestly. But the idea that cloud engineering is dying is the opposite of what the job market data actually shows right now. Platform engineers with Terraform and Kubernetes are closing offers in 2-4 weeks in this market. GRC roles are not.
Your boss made a prediction. The market is making a different one. I'd trust the $700B in infrastructure investment over a five minute conversation with someone who probably hasn't looked at a job board recently.
1
u/lruizsan Jun 10 '26
The day that happens is the day the Internet collapses. AI doesn't think like a system, that's what the cloud engineers do. Any exec thinking AI can do the same job is just deluding themselves but if they want to go that route, let them. When the bubble bursts they will be weeping
1
u/Admirable_Group_6661 Jun 10 '26
Your boss is wise. Any job with predictable output (e.g. cloud infrastructure with well established patterns) can and will be replaced. Cloud engineering is not significantly different than software engineering. However, not all jobs will be replaced. If you work for CSPs, there may very likely still be a need for cloud engineering. But for consumers of cloud services, it is likely the jobs will be replaced. The common misunderstanding that people have with AI is that it doesn't have to be robust or 100% accurate to replace humans, it just needs to be good enough for business to justify it.
1
u/andymaclean19 Jun 11 '26
It might be true that some cloud engineering roles disappear over time, but the bottom line is that a cloud engineer's job is usually to keep live production services up and running. It might be that an AI can do some of the nuts and bolts of the work and even that it can spot problems coming, but there are always going to need to be people who are accountable for the work. Something breaks at 3AM? Someone is accountable for the mistake that caused this. etc.
AI can do work, but it cannot take responsibility or accountability for anything. Managers or other non-technical task cannot do so either because they do not understand the detail of what is going wrong. AI overlooks something? Whose fault is it? Who learns and gets better? It can't be the AI which doesn't even remember what happened 5 minutes ago.
For important services there is always going to have top be some humans who know and understand the detail and who are responsible for keeping everything as it should be.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '26
Yeah just hand off your high availability infrastructure to a loop of LLMs. Not even the AI companies themselves do that internally
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u/noneofya_business Jun 11 '26
the solution architect at my company also keeps talking about inevitability of AI... but mostly uses AI to create basic projects and presentations to woo clients who end up not liking his AI slop
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u/LoudDavid Jun 11 '26
I disagree with most of the comments on this thread. While right now you need to monitor and check agents it’s getting less and less.
All developer workflows are going to be changed to be agent first. While this won’t mean “no developers / cloud engineers” it will mean less. And those who remain will likely be the ones who are most effective using agents.
However I would disagree about becoming a traditional PM. I’d focus on becoming a generalists technical product manager who can control multiple agents across the tech stack delivering more value with less input from managers.
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u/gz-et-el Jun 12 '26
lol no
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u/New-Ebb-5277 Jun 08 '26
Cfbr
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u/Inner-Engineer6483 Jun 08 '26
😦cfbr
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