Up, up and away: cloud salaries are sky-high
September 26, 2011
Cloud computing is big business – but just how big, you may not have realised, until you consider what Chuck Hollis has learnt all too well.
Job seekers with cloud-related skills "make between 20 per cent and 40 per cent more in the job market than their non cloud-trained peers," Hollis says. And he should know: as vice president of global marketing and chief technology officer with information management giant EMC, he has a top-down view of the costs EMC has had to shoulder to get a broad range of cloud-related skills into its workforce of more than 33,000 employees…
"Many people work in organisations where the business couldn’t consume a cloud service because they don’t know how to," Hollis says, breaking down the market into three key new kinds of job roles.
This includes three types of cloud architects: technology enablers who "know a little about a lot of things and make everything work properly"; process re-engineers, who continually revisit and plan strategies for transitioning procurement, IT, finance and other business processes into the cloud; and business enablers, who focus less on cloud technology than on teaching business leaders how to think in the new paradigm.
"The transition usually starts with cloud architects on the technology side," he says, "followed by the process change people, and then the people that can teach the business how to consume the cloud intelligently." Other key cloud-related roles include cloud service managers, cloud capacity planners, cloud infrastructure administrators, cloud security architects, and cloud governance, risk and compliance managers. Many of these represent retraining opportunities for staff in traditional IT roles – who may find themselves less and less necessary as cloud-computing adoption shifts responsibility for key systems outside of the organisation.
Because cloud computing is still such a new and evolving area, skills in these areas attract a premium in the jobs market – and employers, particularly large businesses that are now jumping into cloud initiatives with both feet, are willing to pay handily for the right skills and certifications. EMC’s certification courses "have been very popular," Hollis says, "and most are sold out through the year."
Counting on the cloud
Salaries, where listed, were healthy: for example, several listings for Brisbane-based senior technical business analysts, who are charged with engaging with the business to deliver cloud outcomes, were listed with a $120,000 base salary plus super and "flexible working arrangements".
This sort of money doesn’t go to just anybody, however: these positions require five years as a technical architect, UML or BPM skills, data modelling and database optimisation skills, project management experience, experience in software design and systems integration and specific skills in areas like release management, Agile development, Java/PHP/ASP/.NET development, cloud and/or on-premise systems integration, knowledge of mainstream database platforms and knowledge of other cloud platforms such as Google Apps Engine and Amazon EC2.
If being a technical architect isn’t your thing, there’s a broad range of ancillary cloud-related jobs on offer to support the industry’s push into cloud computing. For example, other jobs included cloud engineers focused on messaging, technical writers to document cloud initiatives, cloud-based ERP/CRM consultants, cloud-based Exchange administrators, service delivery managers, cloud-computing software architects, and more.
A senior channel manager for cloud solutions position was listed at $150,000 to $200,000, while several cloud services team leaders positions – which involve managing teams of engineers, account managers and customers – were listed in the $110,000 to $120,000 range. Another position, selling cloud telecommunications and hosted applications for a "visionary" telco player, offered a $100,000 base salary and $200,000 package including phone, notebook, and more.
There are also opportunities for less-experienced workers: one position for a junior or "mid cloud computing C# engineer" offered a salary between $50,000 and $70,000, with C# and SQL Server development where "you will get exposed to all the latest Microsoft technology". Many others required quite common skill sets including .NET, HTML5, AJAX, JavaScript, jQuery, SOAP, XML, and related technologies. This could make them ideal for younger, less-experienced developers looking to get hands-on experience on progressive cloud projects.
Interestingly, the majority of cloud-related positions were permanent roles, with just 51 contract jobs representing 9% of 569 available jobs. This bucks the overall trend in the IT industry, in which recruiters advise that many employers are holding off on permanent hires in favour of heavy contractor use. For example, 45 of 316 VoIP-related jobs (14%), 552 of 2,594 network engineer jobs (21%) and 1,014 of 3,943 telecommunications engineer jobs (26%) were contract positions.
This implies that employers are particularly eager to get, and keep, staff with cloud-related skills. A Microsoft survey of US businesses earlier this year confirmed cloud as a driver for skills demand: 21% of enterprises said they were hiring more internal staff with cloud-computing experience, with 22% saying cloud experience was a prerequisite for staff hires. This outpaced the number hiring more staff in general (13%), with 7% of companies replacing staff that don’t have cloud experience.
Security will be a crucial area of demand: a recent survey by Frost & Sullivan of training provider (ISC)2 members confirmed this, with half of 7,547 security specialists surveyed expecting demand for security professionals will increase because of cloud computing.
Getting the skills
What this means, of course, is that your future employers want you to be comfortable across the range of cloud solutions. Thankfully, since the market is so top-heavy at the moment, this particularly includes experience with Amazon EC2 compute-on-demand and S3 storage; VMware virtualisation; enterprise Microsoft solutions like Exchange, Active Directory and desktop solutions; Microsoft’s Azure cloud; and security capabilities to protect company interests as they’re extended into cloud-computing scenarios.
Sensing an upswing in the air, Dimension Data Learning Services national marketing and vendor alliance manager Michelle Dowling says many of the training provider’s business clients are laying skills foundations now for initiatives that may still be a bit down the track. This may also include retraining for existing specialists in areas like Microsoft Exchange, demand for which could well decline as businesses start choosing cloud-based alternatives.
"They’re very keen to train up in these new areas, particularly as the cloud becomes more and more relevant to our day to day jobs," she explains. "There are a number of roles, particularly in IT, that may not exist in the future; Exchange will be the first casualties. Twelve months ago we would have said it was going to be a disruptive trend – but now they’ve embraced the cloud and have a plan as to what they’re doing. Even organisations that were doubtful about what their cloud strategy was going to be, have now formalised their plans."
Business acumen and team leadership traits will also be important, since a great deal of a cloud architect’s job involves evangelising the technology to business leaders that can be reluctant to change. Much of these are skills gained by experience, and since it’s such a new area there are still few formal cloud certifications that you can get to bolster your application.
If you’re keen to pursue formal training to bolster your CV, consider IBM’s Certified Solution Advisor – Cloud Computing Architecture and Infrastructure, The Art of Service’s three-level Cloud Computing Certification course, or cloud vendor Salesforce.com’s courses for developers, administrators and consultants.