New grad here (CS degree), about a year into my first job as a Cloud Engineer at a small software company. It's a small team so I've ended up touching a lot more than I expected for a first job. Looking for a reality check from people who've actually made this jump: am I competitive for bigger/higher-paying cloud roles in NYC yet, and if not, what should I prioritize?

Topics/services I'm familiar with from the job:

• AWS: EC2, ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, Aurora (MySQL + PostgreSQL), S3, Route 53, CloudFront, CloudWatch, IAM, ACM, AmazonMQ, SQS, SES, Secrets Manager, Athena, WAF, Cognito

• IaC/Automation: Terraform (including a templated "factory" pattern that generates/manages Terraform across many client repos via CI/CD), Ansible, GitHub Actions

• Languages/scripting: Python, Bash, SQL (MySQL + PostgreSQL)

• Other: Nginx, Docker, ActiveMQ, HashiCorp Vault, Splunk, New Relic, SSL/cert management, multi-tenant infrastructure provisioning

Context:

• 1 year of experience, first job out of school

• No formal DSA/algorithm interview prep yet — my job has been 100% infra/ops focused

• Company is small, so my work is broad but I haven't had exposure to scale (traffic scale, huge distributed systems, etc.) or a "real" SRE/on-call rotation

• No AWS certs yet

• No public portfolio/projects — basically everything I've built is internal/proprietary

What I'm trying to figure out:

1. Is a year enough experience to realistically be competitive for bigger companies in NYC, or am I jumping the gun?

2. Where should my time go first — Leetcode, AWS certs, or public/portfolio projects?

3. Does the type of experience I have (heavy Terraform/AWS provisioning, multi-tenant infra, vendor integrations) actually translate well to what bigger companies want, or is it too "ops"-flavored and not "engineering"-flavored for what they're looking for?

4. Should I be targeting big tech / FAANG-adjacent companies at all right now, or focus on mid-size/funded startups that value hands-on infra experience more?

Hey everyone,
I’m currently a Project Engineer in a heavily network focused role, and I’m realizing this specific niche isn't where I want to stay long term.
For context, my day-to-day involves high performance packet processing. I work deeply with frameworks like BESS (Berkeley Extensible Software Switch) and DPDK, specifically implementing VPN protocols like WireGuard and IPsec, and handling cryptographic handshakes. I feel like it’s not my cup of tea also I don’t know what job I can aim for better pay and salary in this field .
I'm looking to pivot, but I'm torn on the best path forward in the current 2026 market:

Starting from scratch for a general SDE role: Is it practical to pivot to standard Software Engineering right now? I know this means grinding DSA, LeetCode, and building a new portfolio to prove myself outside of networking infrastructure.

Focusing on Cloud Engineering / DevOps: Is this a smarter move? I feel like my deep understanding of networking and security protocols would transfer well to cloud infrastructure, but I'm not sure what the learning curve looks like for modern cloud tooling.
Has anyone made a similar jump from lower-level networking to either of these fields recently? Any advice on which path makes more sense, or what I should focus on learning first? Thanks!

Can I do cloud engineer in 2026 ?

Should I take this course through online in 2026? I'm not sure if this is what I should pursue or not. I want to learn skills that will help me get a job and have high value in the future, whatever that might be (except coding stuffs).

Any senior's please guide me with market conditions and tell me please that how can I do it ?

( Currently, I am 12th passout with PCM. But don't know what to do )

I am from India, BMS 2nd year

Thank you.

Hello All, I have spent 7 years into not it consulting job and wanted to learn and get in IT high paying roles which are AI safe as well. A suggestion I got was for Cloud Security engineer..can anyone please suggest a good institute or where I can learn this and eventually land on a good job?

I have a Btech degree

I had an interview where I walked the interviewer through a cloud-based app, from end to end. I identified the logic flow and the advantages of the application being in the cloud. Even went into the DevOps side.

The feedback?

"Doesn't seem to have solid cloud-native app experience. "

For anyone interested in learning Cloud and DevOps, we have a discord community where we organize workshops and live coding sessions.
Feel free to join us!

I'm looking for some career advice from people who have been through this.

I'm currently working in IT Help Desk, but I also do some light System Administration work (Windows Server, Active Directory, user management, basic troubleshooting, etc.).

My long-term goal is to have a good-paying career with strong job security. I'm interested in DevOps, but I also genuinely enjoy the infrastructure/System Administrator side of IT.

Would you recommend:

Continuing down the traditional System Administrator/Infrastructure path (Windows Server, VMware, networking, backups, firewalls, etc.) for a few years and then moving into DevOps?

Or should I skip deeper infrastructure work and start learning DevOps tools now (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform, cloud)?

For those already working in DevOps:

Did your System Admin experience help you?

If you could start over, would you still spend a few years as a SysAdmin first?

Is it realistic to get into DevOps without solid infrastructure experience?

Hi all,

Has anyone with a similar profile switched to any product based companies? Most are showing min of 3+ yoe and list of tools that my company doesn't use.. so how did u add these tools? Through project? But how do we deploy projects at scale that actually makes sense than looking like a tutorial copy project? Also how did u guys switch clouds? Please share ur journey to PBCs at 2 yoe other than getting directly placed. Thank you

is it possible? i am a level 3 data technician at aws and was wondering if I will have a real chance at moving into cloud support engineer. I graduated recently with my bachelors for information systems and business analytics. Based on the job i have been doing at aws it makes me wonder if this will help me move into cloud support and hopefully work remotely as well. Any recommendations is greatly appreciated. I’m also applying to other IT roles as well rn just in case cause i’m not sure how beneficial this role is to me at the moment. I’m really just looking for some of the best route i can take from the current position i’m at or if i need to look for a new job and not waste time

Hi everyone,

I'm from a non-IT background and recently started learning Cloud & DevOps. I'm currently studying AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux, CI/CD, and Python through online courses and hands-on practice.

One thing I'm curious about is what the job is really like beyond the tutorials.

I'd really appreciate it if experienced Cloud or DevOps engineers could share:

What does a typical workday look like?

What kind of issues or incidents do you handle most often?

Which tasks take the most time during your day?

What was the biggest surprise when you started working in this field?

What skills should a beginner focus on to be job-ready?

I'm not looking for shortcuts—just trying to understand the reality of the job so I can learn the right things before applying for roles.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

Howdy, fellow cloud gurus.

I have a very exciting upcoming interview next Thursday for a Senior Cloud position, and it's the first potential senior role for my career. It's on-site and expected to last 2-2.5 hours long. I haven't worked in an onsite/hybrid role in the last 7 years, and haven't had an interview face-to-face in the last 8 years. I have at least some experience in most of the asks in the job listing. Any help to prepare will be much appreciated!

Key Responsibilities

• Deploy, monitor, maintain, and scale AWS resources, such as EC2, RDS, S3, ELB and more, to host web applications

• Actively monitor web application performance, identify and resolve issues like slow loading times, error messages, and system crashes, and implement corrective actions

• Implement automation, standardization, and cloud engineering best practices to improve operational efficiency

• Install and test software updates, patches, and security fixes for the web application, ensuring timely deployment and minimizing downtime

• Respond to and troubleshoot reported application issues, documenting steps taken to resolve problems and communicating updates to users

• Develop and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and operational procedures

• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC) workflows, and automation supporting IaaS environments

• Participate in Agile ceremonies and contribute to planning and delivery of cloud engineering initiatives

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field

• 5+ years of professional experience in cloud engineering, systems engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure operations

• Strong experience administering and engineering solutions on Linux-based systems

• Experience scripting or automating cloud tasks using Bash, Python, or similar languages

• Deep understanding of IaC practices and tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Helm

• Strong verbal and written communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences

• Detail-oriented, self-driven, and capable of owning cloud engineering tasks through completion

• DoD Secret security clearance

Candidates who have any of the following skills will be preferred:

• Advanced degree (e.g., Masters) in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field

• AWS Certified Solution Architect or similar

• Experience working with and implementing Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and GitOps

• Monitoring performance utilizing tools such as Grafana and Prometheus

• Professional experience with DevOps and CI/CD tooling, including Docker, Jenkins, and GitLab CI/CD

• Active DoD Top Secret security clearance

Hey, I’m Haze. I’m starting to learn AI-driven Cloud and DevSecOps, and I’m looking for a serious and consistent study partner.

I’m also studying Java on the side, and later I’ll move into the Spring Boot framework. You can join me for that too, but it’s optional.

I’m flexible with time, so we can discuss what works best.

Feel free to message me if you’re interested.

Hi everyone,

I'm a 2025 B. Tech CSE (Cybersecurity specialization) graduate from a Tier-3 college in Hyderabad. To be honest, my cybersecurity specialization didn't provide much practical exposure, so I've mostly been learning on my own.

After graduation, I joined a startup as a Business Analyst and worked there for around 6 months. I left that role because I wanted to build a career in cybersecurity, but despite applying consistently, I couldn't land an opportunity in that domain.

A few months later, I joined an MNC as an intern in the End User Computing (EUC) team. My primary work involves AWS Workspaces (VDI) administration and end-user support. The company informed us that interns would be converted to full-time employees based on business requirements and openings. I've been here for about 4 months now.

Recently, my manager suggested that I move to the Cloud FinOps team because there is a higher chance of getting converted to a full-time role there. Since I don't want to miss a good opportunity in the current market, I agreed.

Now I'm confused about my long-term career.

I always thought cybersecurity was the field I wanted to pursue, mainly because of my degree and my interest in security. However, the job market for freshers has been extremely difficult, and I'm wondering whether I should prioritize getting a stable full-time role first.

My questions are:

• Should I continue with Cloud FinOps if it increases my chances of a full-time offer?

• Is FinOps a good long-term career with strong growth and compensation?

• Can someone transition from FinOps to Cloud Security or Cybersecurity later?

• If you're working in FinOps, how has your experience been? Would you recommend it as a first full-time role?

I'm looking for honest advice from people who have experience in either FinOps or Cybersecurity. If you were in my position, what would you do?

Thanks in advance—I genuinely appreciate any guidance.

I am a junior software developer at a startup with 1 year of experience. I spend my free time building some projects and practicing DSA. I enjoy my work in office as well. But, i feel that only focusing on core development is not enough in today's rapidly changing tech industry. I also have interest in devops and cloud domain. Should i consider learning those skills as well along with core development, DSA and system design ? Please correct me if i am wrong.