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Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer

Learning to think like a cloud engineer

I haven’t been paid as a cloud engineer yet. This page explains how I practice the discipline today, what I’ve actually done, and where I still need mentorship.
Current practice

What my 'cloud' reps actually look like

  • AWS Cloud Support internship (Summer 2025): lab exercises, CloudWatch dashboards, IAM investigations, runbook writing.
  • Personal prototypes (Car-Match, ProjectHub proxy) deployed to Netlify/Render with simple CI—Car-Match’s backend cold-starts for ~5 minutes on free Render.
  • Blog posts documenting how I configure budgets, monitor bills, and keep honesty logs of what’s broken.
  • AI pair-programming in almost every session; prompts + reviews live in the repos.
Work samples

Proof (student-level, transparent)

AWS internship labs

  • Built CloudWatch dashboards + SNS alerts for sample environments (documented in internship recap post).
  • Automated repetitive support workflows via shell scripts and AWS CLI.
  • Logged every limitation (no customer-facing tickets alone) so expectations stay realistic.

Portfolio prototypes

  • Car-Match + Docker Multilang repos show how I structure env vars, README runbooks, and TODOs (including Render cold-start expectations).
  • Netlify/GitHub Pages deployments include manual smoke test checklists instead of automated suites (noted in docs).
Tools I'm exploring

Stack in rotation (with AI help)

CloudWatch dashboardsIAM basics + Access AnalyzerS3 / Lambda labsGitHub Actions for small deploymentsDocker Compose dev setupsTerraform tutorials (not production-ready)

I call out each tool’s maturity in the relevant repo. If something is purely experimental, the docs say so.

Where I need help

Mentorship wishlist

  • Designing real multi-account AWS environments (beyond labs).
  • Deep dive into IAM policy design and security reviews.
  • Automated testing/validation for Terraform + deployment pipelines.
  • Incident response in real production settings.

If you’re hiring for junior cloud roles and can provide coaching in these areas, I’d love to talk.