DevOps Engineer vs Cloud Engineer - The Major Differences

Applying DevOps principles with cloud adoption provides a smoother and more focused path to operational maturity. This is especially important for companies transitioning from startup to scale. One of the IT analyst corporations reports that simply using the Cloud or DevOps accelerates software delivery by more than 50%. Using them together, however, results in an 81% acceleration. Here in this blog of DevOps Engineer vs Cloud Engineer, we are going to clear all your confusion, for those who want to have their career as a DevOps or Cloud Engineer.

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Who is a DevOps Engineer?

DevOps Engineers must understand how to build cloud infrastructure, virtual machines, and container images for high availability, scalability, fault tolerance, security, and disaster recovery. They are automated with tools like Terraform and Packer.

DevOps Engineers typically use declarative code to manage deployments using tools such as Ansible, Chef, and Puppet.

DevOps Engineers are responsible for deploying and automating CI pipelines and defining and implementing release strategies. Tools like Jenkins and Spinnaker can help automate your CI/CD pipeline.

This includes application manipulation and debugging, database and storage management, monitoring, configuration, security, and more.

Who is a Cloud Engineer?

A Cloud Engineer is a software engineer who specializes in the design and development of cloud applications, as well as the creation and maintenance of cloud computing systems. They are responsible for planning and executing the organization’s cloud projects and ensuring the organization’s cloud infrastructure’s reliability, scalability and security.

Cloud Engineers work with various cloud technologies and platforms, including private and hybrid cloud environments, as well as open cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform.

DevOps Engineer Job Description

DevOps combines development and operations. DevOps is not a programming language, software, or tool. It is a set of practices that integrate software development and IT operations.

DevOps Engineers offer processes, tools, and techniques to balance requirements across the software development lifecycle, from coding and deployment to maintenance and upgrades. DevOps helps small, interdisciplinary, and self-directed teams collaborate to achieve common goals. Collaborate, automate and respond to feedback from all stakeholders and teammates to drive you directly to product quality and faster delivery.

As DevOps Engineers, their role is to create the tools to create such a culture. Their job is to automate when the business fails, create deployment pipelines and make DevOps not just a great idea, but a reality.

Some of the roles and responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer are: 

• Observe the needs of shareholders and convey them to developers.
• Responsible for the development of frameworks and new tools.
• Protecting the system from cyber threats.
• Look after the software updates and troubleshooting.
• Find the errors in code that are written by others and then analyze the results.

Cloud Engineer Job Description

A Cloud Engineer is someone who understands cloud services and management tools.  They need to be familiar with tools used to automate the setup and deployment of infrastructure.

Some of the tools are Spinnaker, TeraForm, Cloud Formation, etc.

They may also have some knowledge of application architecture for cloud deployments. These configurations of services are necessary to implement highly available and scalable cloud services.

Cloud Engineers build remote networks that businesses use to share data. And can use to move and perform it on a large scale.

Besides, they work on data analysis, data backup, and even software testing and development. The cloud architecture they are building is large enough to serve multiple users and handle large data sets.

The first step for Cloud Engineers is to study the company’s business plan to create a system that fits their needs.

As a Cloud Engineer, one needs to design distributed applications and systems, and along with it, they have to determine the cloud services that the employer of an organization needs.

A Cloud Engineer has to ensure that the company pays for the applications they need, resulting in which it will optimize the costs of cloud services. Moreover, they are responsible for developing, managing, and monitoring the cloud technology and conducting regular maintenance to check for problems. They need to carry out security checks to ensure the cloud applications are secure.

The following are some of the responsibilities of a Cloud Engineer:

• Developing Cloud solutions and designs.
• Cloud-based confidentiality protection for company data.
• Update software, drivers, and firmware as needed.
• Ensure that all operating systems are compatible.
• Control cloud infrastructure.

DevOps Engineer vs Cloud Engineer

It is not a good idea to compare the two professions of DevOps and Cloud Engineer because each one is important to its particular industry. . As both DevOps and Cloud Engineer have several career options in the industry, you must prioritize your interests depending on your personal and professional goals.

Here, are some of the differences between a DevOps Engineer and a Cloud Engineer which everyone must know.

Conclusion

Most companies understand that digital transformation cannot be ignored if they want to be competitive in today’s fast-paced world. DevOps and Cloud Computing are often cited as the primary means by which companies can achieve the transformation they seek, but Cloud computing is about technology and services, whereas DevOps is about the method and performance improvement. Their connection is quite misunderstood therefore it’s crucial to understand how Cloud and DevOps complement one another. Despite being totally competitive, they assist businesses in achieving their improved efficiencies.