Every company is moving to the cloud. Combine coding with infrastructure automation — a scarce, well-paid skill you can layer onto a developer or sysadmin base.
Gold = credential gate. Each turn: more skill → more pay → the next step.
1
Start as a developer or sysadmin
Coding + Linux + networking basics. A dev or IT-ops background is the usual on-ramp.
Deploy and operate cloud systems; pick up Docker/Kubernetes.
4
Own infrastructure & CI/CD · ~$130–145K
Build the pipelines and infrastructure-as-code every team relies on.
5
Specialize: architect or SRE
AWS Solutions Architect Pro, CKA, or Site Reliability Engineering — $160K+.
The flywheel: each cloud certification + shipped automation makes you harder to replace and opens the next platform — the skills compound as fast as the cloud itself grows.
