Some important Cloud Resume Challenge news today. After learning and reflecting on a busy 2021, and listening to feedback from many of you, I'm making several changes that I hope will benefit the whole community.

1. Mentoring

First, it's become clear that the most pressing need in the challenge community is 1:1 mentoring fo…

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Season’s greetings, and Happy Thursday.

We’ve reached the end of 2021, and with it this year’s final episode of “The Best Jobs in Cloud.”

It’s been amazing to hear about people who have gotten hired through this newsletter, and I want to extend a special thanks to all the hiring managers and engineers (well over a hundred of you so far!) who have graciously provided your contact information for referrals. You are making a positive difference in tech.

Some of you have reached out to me with debriefs after interviewing with companies on the list. I always love hearing about your experience, as well as what kind of roles you’re looking for - it really helps me shape the direction of future issues. Just hit reply or reach out on Twitter - my DMs are open.

With that, let’s get to the jobs. Usual reminder to be respectful of our referrals’ time and take their restrictions at their word; don’t contact a Canada-only posting if you are based in the US, don’t apply to a senior position if you have no experience, etc.

Junior jobs

(little to no prior cloud experience required; we’ll train you)

Software Engineer (Internship / Working Student) at Gitpod

Location: True global remote!

My contact says: Gitpod is a cloud-based dev environment tool, you'll be working with lots of languages and lots of experienced folks. A great chance to break the chicken-or-egg problem of no experience, no job. 

Inside track to apply: Hop into the Cloud Resume Challenge Discord and check out the #job-postings channel to chat with Gitpod engineer Lou Bichard about this one.

Sponsor: SADA

SADA has been the largest partner in North America for Google Cloud since 2016 and has twice been named the Google Cloud Global Partner of the Year. SADA has also been awarded Best Place to Work year after year by a bunch of the outlets who award that sort of thing.

I can tell you as well that when I was helping to judge the Google Cloud customer awards this year, the nominations (and the winners) were stuffed with SADA clients. These people know how to do cloud transformation.

What does that mean for you? It means they’re in hypergrowth mode and want to hire you ASAP.

They have a ton of roles open; for seniors, start with Manager, Cloud Security and Senior Data Engineer. These roles are fully remote within the US and Canada, and the data role has a salary range between $140K and $190K. You can send your resume to Ashley Goodwin and mention this newsletter to get the ball rolling.

Bottom line: if you’ve been wanting to try consulting, as every engineer should, and you like Google Cloud, I literally can’t think of a better place for you to go.

Got job openings? I’d love to feature them in a future issue! Just fill out the quick form here.

Mid-level jobs

(a couple years of cloud/DevOps-type experience required)

Azure Cloud Analyst / Engineer at Cirrus Group Consulting

I got to know some people at Cirrus back when I worked for A Cloud Guru. They seem to be a chill and very learning-positive culture.

Location: Remote within the US

Salary: $140K-$160K

My contact says: Join one of the largest application and cloud infrastructure migration and re-factor projects. Working with dynamic teams. Setting up full-scope Azure cloud environments. Fully remote. Training and cloud certifications will be covered.

Inside track to apply: Shoot your resume to Matt; make sure to mention me / this newsletter.

Sponsored: SuperOrbital

Calling all senior cloud engineers! < I would suggest clicking that link and reading SuperOrbital’s full job posting, because it’s delightfully written and quite frankly makes me want to work there.

Here are the things you care about most:

Salary: $160K-$190K + bonuses

Location: Remote within North America

Flexibility: They are hiring contractors as well as full-time employees - this could be an awesome part-time gig for a solopreneur.

What you’d be working on (their words): When on an engineering engagement, you could be writing custom controllers in Go, wrangling Terraform configurations, tweaking Kubernetes clusters, building ReactJS UIs, crafting CI/CD pipelines, or APIs in Python. Each client and each project is different, and that's what makes the job so enjoyable! In-between engagements, and during our 20% time, we work on open source tooling, write about our experiences in our journal, talk at conferences, or research the latest technologies for our workshops.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to this special address. Tell them I sent you.

Software Engineer 2 at Temporal

Temporal’s well-funded and doing some really interesting work. They also have senior-level positions available, such as this cool chaos engineering role.

Location: Remote within the US and Canada

My contact says: Come help build the next giant cloud startup, backed by the same folks behind Hashicorp, MongoDB, Snowflake, etc. (And change backend/async programming forever, nbd)

Inside track to apply: You can email the estimable Shawn (swyx) Wang, a staunch friend of the Cloud Resume Challenge and a generous contributor to the tech learning community in his own right.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Vercel

Vercel just raised another $150 million, and I swear every time I turn around they’ve acquired another developer tooling startup. My “pay attention” alarm really went off (as did that of many other folks in this space) when Joe Emison recently announced that he is moving his startup’s front-end hosting from native AWS to Vercel. Joe’s a coal mine canary for developer trends. Vercel is only going to get bigger.

For this position, note that while the job title includes “senior” the job posting is written in such a way as not to require a specific level of professional experience. They just want to see that you know your way around Javascript and cloud services. (Maybe build a version of the Cloud Resume Challenge using Vercel’s NextJS?) There are also plenty of true senior positions available.

Salary: $100k-$225k USD, depending on location

Location: Remote within the following regions:

• North America: United States, Canada

• Europe: Germany, UK, Ireland, Netherlands

• Asia: Australia, India, Singapore, Japan, China

My contact says: Vercel is innovating on and for the web and at the edge. We build tools and workflows developers love and deliver outstanding performance for end users.

Inside track to apply: If you qualify, send your resume directly to Lindsey, Vercel’s VP of engineering.

Senior-level jobs

(Significant cloud experience; you can lead a team or teach others)

Principal Developer Advocate at AWS

Location: Remote within India

From my contact: Working in DevRel is amazing if you're someone who loves teaching as much as they love coding. This job lets you do both, and on the DevRel team at AWS you have enormous opportunity to help hands-on builders succeed in the cloud.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to the hiring manager.

Senior Engineer (Kubernetes) at Gitpod

Location: True global remote!

Salary: High EU.

Inside track to apply: Ping Lou Bichard on Twitter.

Software Engineering at Swim.ai

Location: In-office; Campbell, CA or Cambridge, UK

My contact says:  As a member of the Swim Engineering Team, you will build real-time streaming applications. This is a high impact, high visibility role providing a large amount of career growth opportunity not only in the field of Engineering but in various other aspects of the SWIM business model. You will engage closely with our Sales Team, Marketing Team as well as partner closely with our customers. You will see the impact of your work and make a difference.

Inside track to apply: Email Diane to start the conversation.

Full-Stack Team Lead at Lumigo

So many of the OG serverless startups have been absorbed into big companies recently, but Lumigo is still carrying the torch for the serverless vision!

Location: Remote in Israel

My contact at Lumigo says: We are literally writing the virtual book on Serverless technology, everything from architecture to CI/CD practices and development. Help us shape the next frontier in technology. We are a strong team with two AWS serverless heroes in which we eat and breathe native cloud technology.

Inside track to apply: Shoot your resume to VP of R&D (and one of those two Serverless Heroes) Efi.

Cloud Architect at Effectual

Location: Flexible based on experience within the US and Canada

From my contact: Effectual is a fast growing, cloud-first managed and professional services company that works with commercial enterprises and the public sector to modernize their workloads. Our work includes application development, cloud engineering, managed cloud, and data & analytics… meaning, you will never get bored in one role or have to leave the company if you want to try something new.

Inside track to apply: Shoot a LinkedIn message to Ryan Hughes.

Sr Cybersecurity Cloud Engineer at Cart.com

An interesting multiple-cloud opportunity involving both Azure and GCP. They are hiring for a bunch of other technical positions as well.

Location: Houston; some remote flexibility available

From my contact: The Sr. Cybersecurity Cloud Engineer is responsible for securing cloud environments, IAM, and enhancing security capabilities. This includes preventative/detective controls, third-party software integration, incident detection and response, system hardening, and application security requirements.  Brings advanced-level skills to research, evaluate, track, and manage cloud security threats and vulnerabilities.

Inside track to apply: Send an email with your resume to Cassie.

Errata: In the Dec 2 issue, an ad for sponsor Filebase failed to mention a 30-day limit on their 5 TB free storage offer (so if you got really excited and stored a ton of data with them, doublecheck your account settings). They do offer an always-free 5 GB tier, though. 

Leadership roles

(Engineering management titles and higher)

Software Development Manager, Serverless Application Experience at AWS

I think this opportunity might be related to the recent Stackery acquihire. Not a manager, but like the idea of improving the serverless dev experience? Several mid-to-senior IC roles are available on this team as well.

Location: Technically Portland, OR (but AWS runs remote for the foreseeable future)

My contact says: AWS Serverless has an industry-leading set of managed services (Lambda++) but they can be challenging to use in complex combinations. This role is part of a newly formed team of ex-startup folks who focus on developer experience. Join us to help customers build the next generation of apps on AWS.

Inside track to apply: Hit up Ryan Coleman on LinkedIn.

VP of Product at ByteChek

ByteChek got Corey Quinn to write his first-ever angel check, so they must be doing something either really right or terrifyingly wrong.

Location: Remote within the US

Salary: $225,000-$250,000 USD

From my contact: ByteChek is on a mission to make compliance suck less. We are looking for an innovative VP of Product to architect a vision for our platform and a mission for our teams, as we continue to disrupt the compliance industry.

Inside track to apply: If you qualify, reach out to Allison on LinkedIn.

And that’s it for 2021. “The Best Jobs in Cloud” will return in the new year. Until then, catch up on the archive and have a great holiday season.

Greetings and happy Thursday from the bottom of the 2022 planning-and-OKRs hole I currently find myself in.

Due to a certain conference in Las Vegas, this is one of the biggest weeks of the year for job searchers, job-hoppers, and job-convincers all around the cloud. Time to polish up those resumes, knock out those c…

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I am once again wishing you a Happy Thursday, and a merry pre-Thanksgiving week for US folks.

I unwittingly started a small Twitter kerfuffle the other day when I rejoiced that more consulting shops are starting to offer flexible subcontracting as an alternative to full-time employment. To be clear, I'm not saying companies should be trying to exploit people by denying them the benefits of full-time work. Rather, I’m advocating for flexibility on the part of employers, as solo-preneuring becomes a lifestyle more people seek.

If you’re not sure of the difference, apply this rule: Only contract with companies that would hire you full-time right now if you let them. That puts the balance of power right where it should be.

In the meantime, quite a few solo-preneurs read this newsletter, so I’m going to start adding an occasional section called “Contractor’s Corner” that calls out interesting gigs you can fit into a larger portfolio. Feel free to let me know if you have feedback on this.

With that, let’s get to the jobs. Usual reminder to be respectful of our referrals’ time and take their restrictions at their word; don’t contact a Canada-only posting if you are based in the US, don’t apply to a senior position if you have no experience, etc.

Junior jobs

(little to no prior cloud experience required; we’ll train you)

Software Engineer - Data Stream (Early Career) at Splunk

Splunk is hiring early-career engineers to work on one of several cloud-related engineering teams. You’ll even have an assigned mentor! Sounds like they want you to have a bachelor’s degree in a CS-related field; I don’t know how negotiable that is. They also want to hear that you have worked on a significant coding project - polish up that Cloud Resume Challenge.

Location: Looks like San Jose, San Francisco, or Seattle. If you’re not in one of those places, they are also hiring for a bunch of remote summer 2022 internships right now.

Inside track to apply:

Read more

Greetings and happy Thursday.

OK, so the reader survey I ran last week turned up some really interesting results.

The strangest and most salient trend was that people looking for senior-level jobs tended to give a target salary range about $40K USD higher than hiring managers are giving me for the same roles. That discrepancy may actually be larger because I used the middle of the candidate range but the top of the company ranges when calculating the averages.

Even weirder, this discrepancy does NOT show up when considering mid-level roles; for people with a couple years of cloud experience, candidates’ salary expectations are right in line with what I’m hearing from hiring managers.

Why is this happening? I do not know, but I would like to hear your thoughts. Please do email me with your anecdata.

In the meantime, let’s get to the jobs. Usual reminder to be respectful of our referrals’ time and take their restrictions at their word; don’t contact a Canada-only posting if you are based in the US, don’t apply to a senior position if you have no experience, etc.

Junior jobs

(little to no prior cloud experience required; we’ll train you)

Reminder for all junior jobs below: these are rare and highly-competitive opportunities. If you do not have prior professional experience, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you complete the Cloud Resume Challenge before applying to any of the roles below. You’ll give yourself a big leg up.

Junior Software Engineer at Kin+Carta

This is an opportunity to join the Kin Accelerator Program, a pretty cool program that pays you to get up to speed on cloud, then throws you right into client engagements. The next cohort starts at the end of this month. Of special note, the minimum qualifications include “Demonstrable experience programming, from classwork, personal study and projects, or past internship(s)”. Reader, let me translate for you: bring your Cloud Resume Challenge and rock the freaking house.

Location: Remote, but you’ll need US work authorization.

My contact at Kin says: We have a pretty robust program for those new to the workforce, or new to engineering roles. This includes training on how we do agile delivery, core engineering (testing, Git, etc), and then role-specific training (web, microservices, etc). We are unique in that we are a B-Corp certified company, which signifies a focus on not just profit, but also people and planet.

Inside track to apply: DM Joe on Twitter for more info.

Dev Degree at Shopify

I guess maybe some of you know about this one, but it was new to me. An interesting twist on work-study that lets you pick up a computer science degree on Shopify’s dime - while also getting paid to work half-time at Shopify. A good fit if you’re at the beginning of your career, or looking into nontraditional education options.

Salary: They say $160K CDN in “total support”, but I’m not sure how exactly that breaks down between salary and tuition reimbursement. It sounds like you come out ahead either way.

Location: Remote, and famously so.

How to apply: Applications for the Fall 2022 cohort are open through February.

Got junior job openings? I’d love to feature them in a future issue! Just fill out the quick form here.

Mid-level jobs

(a couple years of cloud/DevOps-type experience required)

Infrastructure Engineer at Shopify

I feel like every time I send out this newsletter I end up recommending some company two or three times just because it’s that cool. Well, this week I’ve fallen in love with the humanity and flexibility of the hiring process at Shopify. Consider the job linked above a starting point; they have an enormous number of mid-level to very-senior engineering roles available.

Location: More or less true global remote, and famously so!

My contact, who was just recently hired there, says: Their process is a little different in that listings are generic on purpose; the actual role/team is something that gets discussed throughout the process, so people don't have to scan through 200 listings to find the one that's *just right*. So that was really nice. Their onboarding is spot on, super well done, stress-free, and they're expanding like crazy.

Inside track to apply:

Read more

Hello again, and a very happy Thursday to you and yours.

Many of you have sent wonderful feedback about this newsletter; it’s great to hear of folks applying to and landing their next job, and it’s also great to hear suggestions for how I can make this resource more helpful for you. To the latter end, would you mind filling out this short reader survey? It’s totally anonymous and will help me make sure I am representing your needs in future issues!

With that, let’s get to the jobs. Usual reminder to be respectful of our referrals’ time and take their restrictions at their word; don’t contact a Canada-only posting if you are based in the US, don’t apply to a senior position if you have no experience, etc.

Junior jobs

(little to no prior cloud experience required; we’ll train you)

2022 Summer Internship at Cloudflare

Several of you have asked for internship recommendations in this newsletter. I may have to do a special “2022 summer internships” issue upcoming, since it’s that time of year - let me know in comments or the reader survey if that would be of interest to you.

In the meantime, Cloudflare has just opened their internship applications for next summer. That blog has some links to community resources that you can get plugged in on in the meantime.

Sponsor: SADA

SADA has been the largest partner in North America for Google Cloud since 2016 and has twice been named the Google Cloud Global Partner of the Year. SADA has also been awarded Best Place to Work year after year by a bunch of the outlets who award that sort of thing.

I can tell you as well that when I was helping to judge the Google Cloud customer awards this year, the nominations (and the winners) were stuffed with SADA clients. These people know how to do cloud transformation.

What does that mean for you? It means they’re in hypergrowth mode and want to hire you ASAP.

They have a ton of roles open; for seniors, start with Manager, Cloud Security and Senior Data Engineer. These roles are fully remote within the US and Canada, and the data role has a salary range between $140K and $190K. You can send your resume to Ashley Goodwin and mention this newsletter to get the ball rolling.

Bottom line: if you’ve been wanting to try consulting, as every engineer should, and you like Google Cloud, I literally can’t think of a better place for you to go.

Cloud Solutions Architect at Smartronix

Note that this is a different role than the Smartronix role I listed last time. My contact works directly on the hiring team and has let me know that they need to hire someone quickly - and that while you need to be familiar with AWS, the experience requirements listed in the posting are optional.

Location: Remote, but you need to be a US Citizen living in the US with the ability to get a basic security clearance.

My contact says: Broad use of AWS technologies, maintaining multi-account infrastructure including monitoring, automation, advanced networking, Terraform, Lambda functions, etc.

Inside track to apply:

Read more

Happy Thursday!

I thought Joe Emison had an interesting point this week that startups tend to overindex on senior people, which can make hiring unnecessarily difficult. It can also put you in a situation where seniors are building unnecessary projects to justify their existence - a luxury that supposedly disruptive teams …

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Salutations!

Last week, I explained why every engineer should do a stint in consulting, a take that Hacker News had lots of opinions about. Consulting shops have another advantage for job seekers, not mentioned in that post: they hire a LOT of people, and are often more incentivized to train junior folks…

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Hello, and happy Thursday. Before diving into this week’s issue, take a moment to read this excellent Twitter thread on intelligent job hunting from the great Charity Majors. There’s a giant game of musical chairs going on in tech right now; Charity’s advice will keep you from being left in the wrong seat when the music stops.

…

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This week’s sponsors: Trek10, Stedi

General reminder to be respectful of our referrals’ time and take their restrictions at their word; don’t contact a Canada-only posting if you are based in the US, don’t apply to a senior position if you have no experience, etc.

Junior jobs

(little to no prior cloud experience required; we’ll train you)

Associate 5G Cloud Solutions Architect at Verizon

Location: Remote, but you have to live somewhere in the US

My contact at Verizon says: Verizon has begun its foray into cloud computing and you get to be at the forefront of our Solution Architecture, Cloud Engineering, and Developer Advocacy efforts. 5G edge computing is an entirely greenfield way to design, implement, and deploy applications and through this team, you will become an expert in the cloud architecture pattern of the future.

Inside track to apply: Email Robert Belson and mention this newsletter

Got junior job openings? I’d love to feature them in a future issue! Just fill out the quick form here.

Mid-level jobs

(a couple years of cloud/DevOps-type experience required)

Launch sponsor: Stedi

Stedi…

• has a huge vision for transforming B2B transactions and communication

• is led by a great CEO

• is fully serverless

• is fully remote; you can live anywhere in the world

• has a very high talent bar

• Is looking for both mid- and senior-level folks (no juniors at present, please)

• has $70m in funding from top investors

• pays top-of-market salary compared to similarly sized companies; competitive equity package; perks and benefits.

A word from Forrest: Some of the people I know and respect best in this industry work at Stedi, including multiple former coworkers of mine. If you want to build pure serverless systems with incredibly intelligent people that really care about getting things right, Stedi is the place to be.

Inside track to apply: careers@stedi.com; mention this newsletter.

Azure Cloud Architect Consultant at Tidal Migrations

Location: Remote, but legal Canada residency is required.

My contact at Tidal says: Did you ever yearn to work for a startup but never had the opportunity, missed your chance, or were too risk-averse? With Tidal Migrations' portfolio of long term blue chip customers, you have a second chance without the risk. Putting your cloud skills to work now with Tidal Migrations will give you that chance to get in early and enjoy the special camaraderie unique to young companies that have found the sweet spot in their market.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to this handy address!

Software Development Engineer - AWS Identity & Access

Location: In office (Arlington, Berlin, Cupertino, Herndon, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver)

My contact on the AWS Identity team says: As a member of the AWS Identity team, you will work on services that every AWS customer uses and on distributed systems that scale as AWS grows. This means you will help build end-to-end solutions across AWS, and innovate by using cutting-edge technologies and techniques, such as automated reasoning. As an Access Analyzer engineer, you will build services to simplify permissions for all AWS customers. You will innovate by using data analysis techniques, develop systems with a high bar for security and accuracy, and deliver new and improved features that make it easier for customers to manage access to their cloud assets.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to Rachel Blackburn; mention this newsletter

Full Stack Engineer at CloudTamer

Location: Anywhere: true global remote!

My contact at CloudTamer says: Our Full Stack Engineer will be adept at working on every facet of the cloudtamer.io application – from the data storage layer to the user interface. You’ll develop on loosely defined requirements, provide technical guidance to peers, and advance the product from a technology perspective.

Forrest says: The CloudTamer team is up-and-coming, and working on a rich set of problems. I’ve also enjoyed every interaction I’ve had with their team, which isn’t a given. They seem like good folks.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume here; mention this newsletter

SRE/Cloud/DevOps Engineer at Cheetah Digital

Location: Remote anywhere within the US, UK, India, Manilla, Costa Rica, Kuala Lumpur

My contact at Cheetah says: Our journey to the cloud is helping our customers deliver better results to our clients, partners and ultimately end users. Our cloud team is focused on cloud native applications and migrations to AWS.

Forrest says: I have tremendous respect for Justin Brodley, who leads cloud at Cheetah, dating back to his time leading cloud transformations at Fannie Mae - he “gets it” and is great to work with. You’ll be in a good spot here.

Inside track to apply: DM Justin Brodley on Twitter or LinkedIn

Senior-level jobs

(Significant cloud experience; you can lead a team or teach others)

Principal DevOps Engineer at Roche

Location and salary: Fully remote within the US, up to $200K depending on experience

My contact says: Roche has been around for 120 years. This is not an 80hr/week startup, rather it's a solid enterprise with the resources to invest as needed, and right now, that's top-tier people. We are an AWS shop currently using Terraform, Cloudflare & Splunk. Roche is committed to a superior level of software craftsmanship. People with the drive, motivation and vision will excel here.

Inside track to apply: Apply to job posting directly and email Bruce Edge with contact info & resume.

Launch sponsor: Trek10

An AWS Premier Consulting Partner focused 100% on modern application development and serverless, Trek10 is growing fast and hiring quite a few folks to work on large, interesting projects, including Cloud Engineers, Cloud Architects, and AWS Cloud Architects - Kubernetes. Both mid-level and senior-level folks are encouraged to apply.

A word from Forrest: Longtime readers may remember that I used to work at Trek10. The team is humane, humble, good at what they do, and fully distributed. A fantastic place to level up your career. Can’t recommend them highly enough.

Location: Somewhat global remote, but due to timezone constraints they would prefer NAMER or EU-based folks at this time.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to Megan Bivin with headline “Forrest's newsletter”. They’ll be expecting you.

Senior Kafka Engineer or Team Leader, Engineering at Rocket Homes

Location: Fully remote within the US or Canada

About the Kafka role, my contact at Rocket says: Work with great technology like Kafka, Node.JS, AWS and TypeScript along with helping to grow a team of like-minded excited teammates. We offer the support and benefits of a big company while still having the vision of a start-up. The best part is you get to bring the best of you to a new team that needs your vision and excitement.

About the team lead role, my contact says: We're looking for an experienced AWS cloud leader to lead our Enterprise Infrastructure Engineers. They are an experienced, high-performing team building infrastructure for some awesome applications! You've got the opportunity to make a huge impact on a startup-sized culture with enterprise-type benefits and opportunities for growth.

Forrest says: The Rock family of companies is solving some super interesting web-scale problems - plus their Detroit offices are very cool!

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to Dean Simmer for a referral.

Cloud Engineer at Syapse

Location and salary: Fully remote within the US; competitive salary with pre-IPO stock options.

My contact at Syapse says: Our company is dealing with large data analytics platforms to speed precision medicine insights. The Cloud Engineering group is innovating with Argo CD and other tools to create a premier pipeline that accommodates complex configuration management and data migrations.

Inside track to apply: Shoot your resume to John Marx.

Technical Program Manager at AWS Organizations or Software Development Manager at AWS Identity

Location: In-office in Arlington, Berlin, Cupertino, Herndon, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver

My contact at AWS says: As an AWS Organizations technical program manager, you will own and drive projects to ensure a consistent, multi-account management experience for all AWS customers. You will collaborate with internal and external customers to articulate requirements, streamline processes, and simplify multi-account management.

As a resource management software development manager, you will lead engineering teams that build services customers use to organize, explore, and act on their AWS resources at scale. You also will collaborate with leaders across AWS to deliver resource-management features that are essential to customers every day.

Inside track to apply: Send your resume to Rachel Blackburn; mention this newsletter

Senior Networking Engineer at Cheetah Digital

Location: No restrictions; true global remote!

My contact says: Our Senior Networking Engineering role is a key part of our network team defining our hybrid networking stack, future programs and architecture. For a candidate who is looking to transition to network architect soon this is a great opportunity with a clear path to Network Architect in 18-24 months.

Forrest says: Same sentiment as on Cheetah’s mid-level posting. Justin Brodley is an AWS legend and also on my bucket list of “great people I’d like to work with directly someday.” You’ll be in a good spot here.

Inside track to apply: Hit up Justin Brodley on LinkedIn or Twitter DM

Manager of Infrastructure Engineering at HNI Corporation

Location: No restrictions; true global remote!

My contact says: In this position, you will provide global technical guidance and leadership in projects involving a variety of infrastructure technologies (cloud, storage, compute, network, etc). You will organize resources around the execution of business objectives in a highly dynamic environment and will provide technical leadership and direction on the latest technologies and technological opportunities needed in order to give the business a competitive advantage. It’s highly visible and will provide the opportunity to be a part of HNI’s continued digital transformation journey.

Forrest says: This is a chance to get in on the ground floor of a massive cloud transformation at a Fortune 500 company. Not necessarily for the faint of heart, but I have great trust in the leadership.

Inside track to apply: Just ping Forrest on this one (reply to this email is fine)

Senior Backend Engineer at Vendia

Location: Global remote, but you need to be able to operate within +/- 5 hours of the US Pacific Time Zone.

My contact at Vendia says: At Vendia, we’re creating the world’s fastest and most scalable platform for developing and running universal applications. We combine the best of serverless, distributed ledgers and massively scaled cloud services to help customers solve their hardest data sharing and integration challenges. Be part of the movement and join a team of experts that built industry-changing services like AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, Step Functions, S3, and many more.

Forrest says: Tim Wagner, founder of Vendia, is the guy who invented AWS Lambda. You’ll be working on the cutting edge here.

Inside track to apply: Indicate on application that you found Vendia through this newsletter

Leadership

(Director-ish titles and above)

Head of Consulting Services at The Duckbill Group

Location and salary: Remote, but must be legally authorized to work in the US. $180K + bonus / profit share

My contact (OK fine, it’s Corey) says: This role will scale out the consulting function of a surprisingly-well-known consultancy. Our approach to consulting is radically different than most firms, our reputation is sterling, and our guiding philosophy is "this industry takes itself far too seriously; we aim to change that." Plus, our mascot is a platypus with an attitude problem.

Forrest says: I can’t even imagine what it would be like to work for Corey Quinn. And I have a pretty good imagination.

Inside track to apply: Email Corey

Director of Product Management at Vendia

Location: Global remote, but you need to be able to operate within +/- 5 hours of the US Pacific Time Zone.

From the listing: As Director of Product Management for Vendia Share, you will own and drive product strategy and roadmap for Vendia’s flagship product. 

Inside track to apply: Indicate on application that you found Vendia through this newsletter

And that’s it for now! Again, if you are hiring and want to see your role in the next issue, please pass it along via the intake form.

I would also love your feedback on this issue - just hit reply or comment, and let me know what you think. Too much AWS? Would you like to see more variety of roles in areas like PM and devrel? Is there a geographical area you want to see more jobs in? Please let me know - this newsletter will evolve and improve only if we communicate!

Tomorrow this newsletter comes full circle with the launch of the Cloud Resume Challenge book, which began as a post right here in April 2020 and has since blossomed into a global initiative helping countless people on the road to their first job in cloud.

The e-book is 50% off for a few more hours until launch, and wraps up everything I’ve learned about the challenge in partnership with the worldwide challenger community:

• 130+ pages of tools, tips, and challenge add-on ideas

• The secret “17th step” that makes your project stand out above the crowd

• How to write a challenge blog post that will get the right kind of attention

• Four all-new bonus projects covering AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, and more

• Proven challenge-to-job strategies for both career-changers and upskillers

• Case studies from challenge champions: how they got hired, what they learned

Plus, there’s one more perk for book buyers that I’m incredibly excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll be sending out the first issue of something I’m calling The Best Jobs in Cloud.

But first: how exactly do you find a good job?

A big part of the Cloud Resume Challenge for me has been connecting tons of champions to hiring mangers within my personal network. I love doing this (despite the number of LinkedIn DMs it requires), and I wanted to do it for as many folks brand-new to cloud as I could.

What I did not so much anticipate was that many established engineers would also reach out asking for help getting their next gig.

When you think about it, this makes sense. For the most part, working engineers are doing just that: working. They’re not spending long hours building their professional network, tweeting or blogging or whatever. And so when the time comes for a job change, they often feel like they’re starting from scratch.

Sure, there are tons of opportunities out there for people with experience. But that creates a problem of its own. How do you separate the signal from the noise, the great jobs from the terrible ones, ensuring that you won’t be burned out and back on the market in three months? (Just as the great engineers aren’t usually on the market, a lot of open roles out there are … open for a reason.)

Some of us in the industry have tried to solve this problem by encouraging all engineers to build thriving professional networks in their spare time. I have also encouraged this, and still do. But I’ve come to accept that it’s not reasonable to expect every programmer, sysadmin and engineering manager to become their own personal brand guru.

So what to do? You could check out job boards, but those are noisy and have weird incentives. You could hope that someone you know happens to have a great opportunity open exactly at the time you’re getting fed up with your current role. Hope isn’t much of a strategy, though.

I’ve come to realize that the best solution is the one I’ve been running ad-hoc off the side of my desk for the last 16 months: editorial curation. Outsourcing your networking to a friend who can swing you internal referrals to companies they trust. Basically, I’ve been acting as a talent agent for engineers, both junior and senior. And I figured it was time to put some process around this.

I’ve realized there’s a leg up here for hiring managers as well. We all know that 90% of the great engineering talent isn’t actively on the market at any given time. Instead, they’re building, sharpening their skills … and, for several thousand of them at least, they’re reading this newsletter. Why not meet them where they are, every two weeks, with an offer they can’t refuse? In a newsletter where job ads aren’t mixed in with other stuff, but where they’re the whole point?

Introducing “The Best Jobs in Cloud”

“The Best Jobs in Cloud” is a new add-on to this newsletter that will come out every two weeks on Thursday.

In each issue, I curate awesome cloud job opportunities from around my network, including an inside referral for each job so you can skip the application line.

What do I mean by “the best”? I’ll be using the following editorial criteria when putting this newsletter together:

• I bias for remote jobs; even better if they are true, global “work from anywhere” remote jobs without a geographical restriction.

• I bias for jobs that include a salary range (it’s hard to get companies to post these, but I push for it wherever I can).

• I bias for jobs where I personally know people inside the company and can vouch for the health of the culture and the interesting-ness of the work.

• I sort the list according to required experience, and I try to make sure I have a healthy balance of junior, mid-level, and senior jobs. (I may use a few sponsored listings to make sure I achieve that balance; don’t worry, the sponsored posts will go through the same editorial criteria as everything else.)

Some of the jobs will look familiar; the big 3 cloud providers will represent, for sure. Others will be with interesting startups you’ve never heard of. All will be excited to hear from you. (If you’re hiring and you want to list a job, just fill out this quick form!) Yes, I really am serious about using the Cloud Resume Challenge to help you get hired.

There’s a $5 /month subscriber cost if you just want the newsletter, mostly to keep my hiring managers from getting too overwhelmed with resumes, but again — you will get this newsletter for free by purchasing the Cloud Resume Challenge book. That’s right: it’s really intended as a free, ongoing add-on to the book, for as long as you need it. I’d argue you need it as long as you work in cloud. It’s always important to know the state of the market, even if you’re not actively shopping for a new role.

Plus, I’m going to send the first issue to the whole newsletter for free, so keep an eye out for that tomorrow. I’d love your feedback on whether it’s useful to you, or what other information you would need to make it worth your while.

To all of you who have contributed to making the Cloud Resume Challenge community a small miracle in tech, thank you. I’m hopeful that these new features will help the mechanics of the challenge scale much bigger than “Forrest’s inbox”. And I can’t wait to see many more of you take the next step in your careers.