Ask HN: What skills do you need to be a “Cloud Developer”?

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4 points by holmes89 2888 days ago

I've been reading John Sonmez's book Soft Skills and in the early chapters he states that it's important for a developer to understand what you want your "focus" to be in (full stack, embedded systems, etc.)

What skills you would expect if you were to fill a "Cloud Developer" position?

I feel like the term is so vague that it can range from developing "cloud-native" applications to DevOps. I've looked around and can't seem to find a clearer definition.

2 comments

mindcrime 2888 days ago

I'm sure definitions vary, but I can tell you a bit about what it means at my $DAYJOB employer. For context: we are a Java shop in terms of our backend service development.

Here, a "Cloud Developer" would be expected to have most of the same skills as any Java backend developer: core Java, SQL, RESTful API development with Jersey or Spring, probably some experience with Hibernate or something similar. Some knowledge w/r/t securing API's with OAuth, SAML, etc. would be part of the mix. Then add knowledge of a portion of at least one cloud provider's offerings. We use AWS, so we'd expect somebody to be familiar with using EC2, S3, IAM, probably RDS, maybe DynamoDB, possibly EMR, etc. using both the API and the UI. Then mix in a little bit of "devops'ish" stuff: shell scripting, at least a little exposure to Ansible or Terraform, etc.

We're only just starting to go down the container route, so experience with things like Docker, Kubernetes, ECS, etc. would probably be a "nice to have" right now.

Something approximately like that is how we'd go looking for a "Cloud Developer" with the exact details depending on the experience level of the position. Of course another firm might prefer, say, Azure skills over AWS, or maybe they'd want OpenStack instead. We just happen to be heavily invested in using AWS, although an OpenStack based internal cloud may be in the picture down the line. So that could change the dynamic of what skills we look for.

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Theophraustous 2888 days ago

This is a fairly similar question to asking what skills are needed to be a "Front-End Developer". What technologies are you most interested in/ are in-demand where you are seeking employment?

Don't just think up a job title and then learn to do that.

Try drilling down deeper, doing research in your area, or just learning what is popular, and you will usually have a title that matches it.

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holmes89 2888 days ago

That's what I'm trying to figure out I guess. I have some skill sets which may be fall under "Cloud Developer" skills like: building microservices in Java, building containers, know how to write serverless apps.

But is that it? I mean with a "Front-End Developer" you can at least ask the framework they build in.

What I'm trying to find (and may not be able to) is what it would mean to be a "Cloud Developer". Something as simple as throwing an API on an AWS instance doesn't seem like it would qualify but hosting a number of containers in AWS does?

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