India to have 1 m new cloud computing jobs by 2022

Professionals in cloud computing domain can earn 40 per cent more than average market salaries for IT professionals as more than a million cloud computing jobs will be created in India by 2022. Releasing data to this effect in its recent report Great Learning, a leading ed-tech platform for executives, maintained that the industry suffers acute shortage of talent with more than 1.7 million cloud jobs worldwide remaining vacant due to shortage of talent. According to IDC, there is only one qualified candidate for 100 job postings in cloud computing across the globe. The major reasons for this gap are lack of training, hands on experience in a cloud-based environment and industry recognized certification. This skill gap comes at a time when almost two-thirds of global enterprises are using cloud computing; and the investment being made in cloud infrastructure is 4.5 times the rate of traditional IT spending.

According to the report, in India, the salary of an entry level cloud professional is around Rs5 to 7 lakh, which is significantly greater than that of a traditional IT engineer who earns about Rs3 to 5 lakh. The salary for an associate working in cloud with less than 5 years of experience can range from Rs12 to 19 lakh, while a mid-level manager can easily command upwards of Rs20 lakh p.a.

Cloud Architects, a new role in the cloud space of an expert who understands both IT infrastructure and applications, and can design and manage application frameworks and operations, can earn upwards of Rs30+ lakhs. In fact, MNCs like Oracle have been known to pay senior cloud professionals with 15 – 25 years of experience as much as Rs1 cr p.a.

India IT embracing cloud

The Indian cloud computing market, currently at $2.2 billion, is growing rapidly and is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2020 with an annual growth rate of more than 30 per cent. As per IDC, an estimated 1 million new jobs will be created in India by the year 2022 as more companies adopt cloud technology. Skills in DevOps, SaaS, IaaS, Automation, Agile and SDN are going to be critical for IT professionals to land these jobs. In line with these skills, job profiles like Cloud Architect, Cloud Software Engineer, Cloud Enterprise Architect and Cloud Infrastructure Engineer are already in great demand.

Traditional IT roles are going to cloud

With traditional IT companies like Cognizant, TCS, Infosys and Tech Mahindra increasingly building solutions on cloud owing to increased flexibility, scalability and speed, there is a huge demand for professionals who can integrate cloud solutions with existing, on-site systems. When a company migrates to cloud, software engineers need to upskill to learn cloud APIs and manage services like container platforms to build cloud-native applications.

New opportunities for analytics professionals

Cloud offers attractive career opportunities to analytics professionals like data architects, data scientists, security experts and migration experts. With Cloud Service Providers offering Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) – a combination of data analysis and visualisation tools that require only limited programming knowledge, new opportunities have opened for analytics aspirants as there is less of a technical barrier to move into an analytics-based role in the cloud computing domain. — TNS