Not an official Job Description

A day in the Life of a Cloud Support Engineer

What does a Cloud Support Engineer do?

First and foremost this is a customer support role – in The Cloud 

Customers leverage your knowledge and expertise to help them with architecture design best
practices, advanced AWS/Network/Architecture/Service integration while keeping their applications
highly available.

Customers reach out via chats, calls or email, seeking assistance with various issues pertaining to our
services or more advanced technical issues. These cases could have straight-forward solutions or
they could be very advanced cases where you need to engineer a solution. Here you would replicate
customer environments on your AWS engineer account, where you have access to all AWS services.

You regularly have to advocate for your customer and engage various internal resources. Customers
often use more than just one service, which allows you to broaden your horizons and engage with
internal “gurus” on services/networks/software you would not be generally be exposed to.

You will not have direct contact with or administer the customer environment.
Reproducing customer infrastructure designs in order to replicate their issues gives you hands on
experience with the AWS service which in turns opens the door for you to become an SME (Subject
Matter Expert).
Most services have an operations queue that SME’s typically form part of, giving you elevated
privileges or tooling, allowing you to solve more complex and sensitive technical challenges for our
customers.

Not only does becoming a SME open career doors for you, it can also open travel doors for you. You
may need to travel to spend time with your SME mentor in another country, or to get direct training
from Developers in the Service Team (who create our services), or to attend a boot camp for a
service in order to bring SME’s back home, or to assist with content creation of new/current
services. Collaboration with the Service Team ensures they are aware of customer challenges and
helps to improve the customer experience.

When you’re not in direct contact with customers

The remainder of the day gives you the opportunity to work on casework, attend or present training,
work on projects or get involved in hiring (interviewing).

We have the feel of a start-up, which means there is always room for improvement and innovation.
Nothing is stopping you from getting involved with projects that help to make a difference on
operations or the customer experience.

An important aspect of such a fast-growing organisation is mentorship. There are many

opportunities for you to help teach others, or receive mentorship from others. Find out who knows
more than you and pick their brains.

In the words of one of our CSEs:

“Our teams are very dynamic, and from time to time I get to work cases from other profiles, I get to
engage with my fellow engineers on difficult use cases and I love the idea that someone is always
there to help out. I have ended up in a few sessions where up to 5 engineers and a white board
discuss cases and found various solutions for our customers. We get to play and have fun; there is
always an Echo, IOT button, or Raspberry Pi floating around where new ideas are tried and tested.
People jump in and get involved in ideas to make our lives easier. Let’s just say that IoT is not just
another buzz word in the office…”
Not an official Job Description

Career development
You drive your own career at AWS.

Joining AWS offers a steep learning curve initially. You may feel a little overwhelmed with the mass
of information suddenly available to you. It will all fall into place 
Never stop asking questions and don’t be too shy to ask for help. Everyone is more than happy to
assist.

You will spend the first 6-12 months focusing on learning and working support cases, depending on
your skillset.

Premium Support presents excellent career growth opportunities; you will receive intensive training
on AWS Services and you will get to partner with various other teams within the business, opening
opportunities to progress into other areas, depending on where you want to go.

Some roles our CSEs have grown into (but not limited to):

- Principal Cloud Support Engineer

- Software Development Engineer (Developing the services we offer to customers)
- Team Lead
- Operations Manager
- Escalation Engineer
- Technical Account Manager (Working with Enterprise customers, helping them
onboard/design on AWS)
- Solutions Architect (Designing infrastructure/processes with the customer)

Due to our exponential growth and continuous innovation, we have new teams being developed all
the time, offering new and exciting opportunities for our employees, globally.

Think about where you want to grow and then find out from that team what you need to do to
equip yourself for that role. You drive your personal development and your manager’s role is to
support your journey.

Working hours
This role involves different working patterns, which are subject to change. However we will
endeavour to inform you in advance when a change to your working pattern is coming up, and your
personal circumstances will be taken into account whenever possible.

Your normal working hours are 9 hours per day (including a 60 minute meal/rest period), 5 days a
week, and you will normally have two consecutive non-working days

There is no standby in this role - when you are offline you are offline.

This Video gives you some insight into working within AWS Premium Support.