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ANZSCO 2632Skill level 1Technology and data

Cloud engineer

Design, build and operate cloud-based infrastructure on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

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Salary

Cited figures from Job Outlook and QILT. ExamExplained does not publish predictive earnings or projections.

FigureAUDSource
Full-time weekly earnings$2500Job Outlook (2025-06-01)

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What a cloud engineer actually does

Cloud engineers spend most of the day in a terminal, an IDE and a browser tab full of cloud consoles. Mornings usually start with a stand-up, a scan of overnight alerts from CloudWatch, Azure Monitor or Datadog, and triage of anything that paged on-call. From there the work splits between shipping infrastructure-as-code changes (Terraform, Bicep or Pulumi), reviewing other engineers' pull requests, and partnering with developers on deployment pipelines. Afternoons often go to longer-horizon work: designing a new VPC layout, tightening IAM policies after a security review, or running cost-optimisation passes against the latest bill. Most teams run hybrid with 2-3 office days; fully remote is common at cloud-native shops. Hours are typically 38-45 per week, with an on-call rotation that can mean evening or weekend pages once every few weeks.

Typical tasks

  • Design and provision cloud architectures as code.
  • Run platform operations and on-call.
  • Tune cost and reliability of running services.

Skills you'll use

  • Linux command line and shell scripting
  • Infrastructure as code with Terraform or Bicep
  • One major cloud platform in depth (AWS, Azure or GCP)
  • Networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, VPCs)
  • Containers and orchestration with Docker and Kubernetes
  • CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions, GitLab or Azure DevOps
  • Python or Go for automation and small services
  • Reading cloud bills and reasoning about cost drivers
  • Writing runbooks and incident post-mortems

How to become one

  1. 1Finish Year 12 with English and Maths Advanced or Methods (Maths Standard limits some uni options)
  2. 2Complete a 3-year Bachelor of Information Technology, Computer Science, or Software Engineering. A double with maths or commerce helps for fintech and data-heavy employers
  3. 3Build a public portfolio: a personal site hosted on AWS or Azure, a Terraform repo on GitHub, and 1-2 cloud certifications (AWS Solutions Architect Associate is the standard entry cert)
  4. 4Land a graduate role in platform engineering, DevOps, or general software development, or start at an MSP doing cloud migrations for SME clients
  5. 5Spend the first 2-3 years rotating through compute, networking, security and CI/CD work. Aim for an associate-level cert in your primary cloud
  6. 6Move into a senior cloud or platform engineering role around the 4-6 year mark, and start specialising (security, FinOps, Kubernetes, data platforms)

Where you can work

  • Big four banks and other ASX-listed financial services firms
  • Federal and state government digital service teams
  • Telcos and large retailers running internal platforms
  • Consultancies and managed service providers running client cloud estates
  • Cloud-native scale-ups and SaaS product companies
  • The Australian arms of the major cloud vendors and their partner network

Career progression

Typical stages and salary bands. Salary figures are sourced from Job Outlook, QILT or industry bodies; brackets are 25th-75th percentile not absolute floors or ceilings.

  1. Graduate
    0-2 years
    Typical roles: Graduate cloud engineer, Junior DevOps engineer, Associate platform engineer
    Salary band: $70,000 - $90,000 per year (source, sourced 2026-05-21)
  2. Mid-level
    3-5 years
    Typical roles: Cloud engineer, DevOps engineer, Site reliability engineer
    Salary band: $110,000 - $145,000 per year (source, sourced 2026-05-21)
  3. Senior
    6-9 years
    Typical roles: Senior cloud engineer, Senior SRE, Senior platform engineer
    Salary band: $150,000 - $200,000 per year (source, sourced 2026-05-21)
  4. Lead or principal
    10+ years
    Typical roles: Lead cloud architect, Principal platform engineer, Head of platform

Is this for you?

You might love this if

  • You like designing systems and reasoning about how parts fail
  • You can stay calm and methodical when production is down at 2am
  • You enjoy automating boring tasks rather than doing them by hand
  • You read documentation properly before guessing
  • You can explain a tricky technical trade-off to a non-technical manager

This might not suit you if

  • You never want to carry an on-call pager
  • You dislike the constant churn of new services, new tools and new pricing models
  • You want to work mainly with people rather than systems
  • You hate writing documentation or post-incident reports

Three ways in

Uni, TAFE and trade routes for cloud engineer. Not every career has all three; we only list pathways that actually lead to this occupation.

University

Bachelor degrees that lead to this career.

TAFE / VET

Nationally accredited Certificate and Diploma qualifications.

No direct TAFE pathway to this career.

Apprenticeship trade

Earn while you learn through an Australian Apprenticeship.

Not an apprenticeship trade.

Sources

ExamExplained does not publish predictive salary figures. For current Australian earnings data check Job Outlook directly. Career classifications follow the ABS ANZSCO 2022 release.