More than Certification Exams: Preparing For a Cloud Architect Career

 Written by Michael Gibbs, CEO & Founder — Go Cloud Careers

Landing a job as a cloud architect is only difficult for candidates who don’t have the right skills. Throughout the process of preparing for a career in cloud architecture, candidates will encounter many different certifications they can obtain, but there's so much more to the role of cloud architects than passing exams to obtain these certifications. While certifications can teach candidates the names and types of different cloud services and how to configure them, this is more helpful for cloud administrators rather than architects. To best prepare for a cloud architect career, candidates must first learn the skills they’ll need to possess in order to get hired.

The role of a cloud architect requires a distinct hybrid of leadership and technical skills. In truth, half of the role’s functions are non-technical. Candidates won’t acquire a job in cloud architecture just from studying DevOps, SysOps, Python, and passing certification exams for these tools; they need to learn how to become a great leader, systems designer, project manager, communicator, and salesperson. These are skills that can’t be learned from certification exams, but nonetheless are skills candidates have to master in order to best prepare themselves for a successful career as a cloud architect.

What does a Cloud Architect do?

Design

Before all else, cloud architects are end-to-end system designers. Cloud architects start building those designs by asking each client specific questions pertaining to their business, its goals, competitors, and pain points to design a cloud system that meets the objectives of the client. Once designed, cloud architects have to present that system to the client and acquire buy-in from them. If a candidate only possesses cloud certifications but has limited knowledge in system design, sales, and business it becomes impossible to be effective in the role.

Selling

As cloud architects, we always have to be effective salespeople. We’ll need to sell internal management to convince them to delegate several dozen cloud engineers for a project. We have to understand how to sell clients our solutions and how to sell solutions to their internal management that we know will make their organization more efficient. Any designs you build and propose need to be sold to management to get buy-in from them. Almost every function of a cloud architect’s job — be it communicating or presenting solutions internally to leadership, externally to clients, or responding to a Request for Proposal (RFP)  — requires sales skills that simply can’t be learned from passing certification exams.

Business acumen

Once a cloud architect obtains information about the business of their client, they must then have the business knowledge or acumen in order to transmute that client’s information into a cloud technology solution. Without understanding the client or their business needs, that solution can't be designed successfully. When clients purchase a cloud technology, they do so to solve problems facing their business. As such, every cloud architect must have the business acumen necessary to understand their client’s business and its problems when designing and implementing a solution for them.

Leadership

Leadership skills are a core aspect of a cloud architect career. Oftentimes, we will find ourselves leading teams of cloud engineers who don’t directly work for us. Managing, motivating, and asking things of people who don’t work directly for us is far more difficult than doing so with a team of people who do. Certification exams won’t teach you how to lead and manage employees who work directly for others, so candidates will need to possess exceptional emotional intelligence to effectively persuade and influence those working with them. Candidates have to be incredible leaders in order to become successful cloud architects.

Writing and documenting

Roughly 25% of a cloud architect’s time will be spent writing documents, so candidates entering the field also need to be exceptionally skilled at writing and documenting. Cloud architects will need to be able to not only write easily-understandable documents for clients and stakeholders who may not be technology professionals, but also how to draft technical papers for ones who are. Being able to write at both these levels is required to remain relevant to your clients and partners, so learning this skill in preparing for a career as a cloud architect is critical. Additionally, candidates should expect to respond to requests for information (RFIs), requests for proposals (RFPs), requests for quotes (RFQs), and ROI models to show clients how the solution proposed to them is more valuable than its cost.

Communication

Nobody has ever handed a cloud architect a case study, document, or white paper and said, “design this.” That information is only obtained by asking clients. We gather information on their business by asking the organization’s executives. We gather information on their technology and systems by asking the organization’s managers, architects, and engineers. In order to know which questions to ask, and how to most effectively ask them, cloud architects must have outstanding communication skills. To add to this, we can’t ask the client or a stakeholder to answer the same questions over and over again. Some of those questions might be sensitive in nature, but need to be asked regardless, which is another area where having high emotional intelligence is vital to preparing for a cloud architect career.

Concluding remarks

To best prepare for a cloud architect career, candidates should focus on improving their business acumen, emotional intelligence, and other non-technical skills far more than passing certification exams. No certification is able to help candidates become strong leaders, capable salespeople, or effective communicators. Instead, begin preparing for your career by building up your emotional intelligence and soft skills like empathy. Improving your technical skills comes second. Once you’ve effectively done both, you will be far better equipped to begin a career as a cloud architect.