The Cloud Skills Gap: Understanding it and Finding Solutions

Our cloud computing recruitment division has been placing Cloud professionals for over a decade. This expertise has provided us with a front-row seat to the cloud talent shortage. It's reached crisis levels, let’s look at the reasons why.

Fast-Paced Development:

What's really behind the skills gap? It's not that companies are looking for superstars with skills that no one has. It's that cloud technology is evolving faster than education can keep up. Universities teach the basics—virtual machines. But companies need the latest and greatest: serverless architecture and container orchestration expertise.

Cloud services are launching new features every month. IT courses update their curricula every two to three years. Certification training are usually six to twelve months behind what companies really need. That leaves on-the-job experience as the only reliable way to learn and that's where the real gap starts.

The Experience Paradox

Companies want experienced cloud professionals but there aren’t enough senior people to mentor junior talent. This creates a vicious cycle where entry-level candidates can’t get experience and companies can’t find the skilled professionals they need.

Many job postings require 3+ years cloud experience, yet only a small percentage of computing graduates have practical cloud skills, hence initiatives like the University of Lincoln to bridge the skills gap. Companies reject talented candidates for lacking specific experience whilst senior professionals are overwhelmed and have no time to mentor newcomers.

The Multi-Disciplinary Challenge

Modern cloud roles require skills that didn’t exist 10 years ago—infrastructure knowledge with software development, security expertise with business communication, cost optimisation with performance tuning. This breadth takes years to develop but companies need it now.

Root Causes of the Crisis

1. The Legacy Skills Trap

Many IT professionals can’t adapt from hardware-centric to cloud-native thinking. The mental shift is huge and often underestimated by both professionals and employers.

The transition challenges are:

• From physical hardware to software defined infrastructure

• From separate development and operations to DevOps

• From servers to services

• From capital expenditure to pay per use

2. The Certification Illusion

The market is flooded with certified professionals who have no practical experience. Multiple choice exams don’t test troubleshooting skills, lab scenarios are way too simple compared to production environments and certification mills produce paper qualified candidates. As a result, hiring managers have lost confidence in certification value.

3. The Complexity Explosion

AWS has over 200 services with countless options. Best practices change as platforms evolve, integration complexity grows exponentially and decision fatigue sets in. Even experienced professionals feel like they are always behind the curve in this ever-expanding landscape.

4. The Business Skills Gap

Engineers can’t explain technical choices in business terms, whilst executives approve cloud strategies without understanding operational requirements. This communication breakdown leads to misaligned expectations, project failures and huge budget overruns.

Industry-Specific Challenges

Regulated Industries Face Extra Barriers

Healthcare, finance and government sectors have to comply with strict regulatory requirements that many cloud professionals don’t have any experience with.

Specific barriers include:

• GDPR affects fundamental architecture decisions

• Data residency rules limit cloud service options

• Audit trail requirements make system design harder

• Legacy integration needs constrain cloud native approaches

Solutions: What Companies Can Do

1. Develop Internally

Instead of just hiring externally, successful companies build cloud skills within existing teams. This takes longer initially but creates more loyal, context-aware professionals who understand the business.

Key areas to focus on;

• Structured learning paths: 6–12 month programs combining theory with projects

• Mentorship programs: Pair junior staff with experienced professionals

• Internal communities: Knowledge sharing through technical talks

• Practice environments: Sandbox accounts for safe experimentation

2. Rethink Hiring

Companies need to focus on potential and learning ability rather than experience checklists. The traditional approach of requiring years of experience with specific tools creates artificial scarcity and excludes talented candidates who could contribute quickly with proper support.

Better hiring practices involve skills-based assessments that test problem-solving rather than just knowledge, portfolio reviews that evaluate practical projects over certifications, cultural fit that prioritises curiosity and communication skills, growth potential that assesses learning velocity and adaptability.

3. Clear Career Progression

Professionals need paths to advancement that reward technical depth and business impact. Many talented technical professionals leave for other companies because they can’t see how to grow within their current company.

Career development should include:

• Multiple tracks for specialists vs management paths

• Skill based promotions with clear criteria

• Cross functional exposure through business rotations

• External learning support for relevant conferences and courses

Solutions: What Professionals Can Do

1. Focus on Fundamentals, Not Trends

Don’t chase every new service or tool, build strong foundations in core concepts that apply across platforms. Trends come and go, but fundamental understanding creates lasting career value.

Essential areas to focus on:

• Networking basics: Data flow between services

• Security principles: Defence-in-depth

• Cost economics: Efficiency not just functionality

• Monitoring: Systems you can troubleshoot

2. Build Real-World Experience

Theory and lab exercises aren’t enough—you need to solve actual problems and learn from failures. The gap between tutorial knowledge and production reality is huge, and only hands-on experience can bridge it.

Practical strategies include building and maintaining personal cloud infrastructure for real projects, contributing to open-source initiatives that solve problems others face, volunteering skills to help non-profits with their tech needs, and taking on small consulting projects to gain experience across industries.

Author

Ailish Kelly specialises in cloud technology recruitment with 4 years of experience placing professionals across the UK market. Partner with us to secure top cloud talent for your business - submit your roles today