u/Creative-Dentist-383

I am currently working in cloud engineering for the past 1,5 years, mainly Kubernetes, Terraform and Aws/Azure.

I was contacted by a recruiter from a major cloud provider for a support engineering position, which is customer facing support for cloud customers. The role is mainly built around debugging customer issues with the cloud offerings that are raised via tickets and similar topics. Apparently also building some internal automations and the odd workshop. It would be a 15% pay bump so nothing too significant. Generally the role is still in the realm of what I do know (cloud), I just would not build anymore.

II'm torn between the brand/exposure value of seeing hundreds of edge cases across different customer environments, versus staying on a path where I actively build and own production systems. If I take the job, I plan on doing it for ~2 years and then moving back to a role where I actively build. I feel like the brand could help me to get to better companies for a hands on engineering role?

I have 3 years of experience as a Data Engineer, mostly focused on Spark optimization, pipeline architecture, and building data infrastructure from scratch. I genuinely enjoy the technical depth and the building aspect of the work.

I now have an offer for an internal Technical Enablement Engineer role at a well-known company, who want to build decentralized data teams. The job involves solving complex technical problems for other engineering teams, answering technical questions, and occasionally running internal workshops. It's purely internal technical support at a high level, obviously still all in the realm of Data Engineering. The compensation jump is significant + nice brand at which I wanted to work for some time now.

My plan is to stay for 18 months max, absorb the internal technical knowledge and the brand, and then return to a role where I actually build things.

My concern: will 18 months away from hands-on building work hurt me enough that I can't return to a IC engineering role, assuming I keep those skills sharp on the side?

My background is ~2 years of cloud engineering experience in consulting. I've mainly built Terraform modules and designed Aws architectures.

I now have an offer as an AWS Cloud Support Engineer for a newly launched region. Because the region is new, many issues are still internal. However I won't be actively building Infra myself. Instead I'll be debugging customer infrastructure issues and escalating internally. My motivation for the role is the AWS internals exposure, partly the brand on the CV for long term career leverage. I want to return to hands-on cloud engineering after this chapter (if possible an internal transfer). I would obviously continue with Open Source next to this job and build some demo setups with Terraform. However I am wondering whether trading 18 months of active building for AWS brand and internals knowledge a reasonable calculated bet? Or will it be tricky to move back into a hands on engineering role?

My background is ~2 years of cloud engineering experience in consulting. I've mainly built Terraform modules and designed Aws architectures.

I now have an offer as an AWS Cloud Support Engineer for a newly launched region. Because the region is new, many issues are still internal. However I won't be actively building Infra myself. Instead I'll be debugging customer infrastructure issues and escalating internally. My motivation for the role is the AWS internals exposure, partly the brand on the CV for long term career leverage. I want to return to hands-on cloud engineering after this chapter. I would obviously continue with Open Source next to this job and build some demo setups with Terraform. However I am wondering whether trading 18 months of active building for AWS brand and internals knowledge a reasonable calculated bet? Or will it be tricky to move back into a hands on engineering role?

My background is ~2 years of cloud engineering experience in consulting. I've mainly administered k8s clusters and built Terraform modules and designed Aws architectures.

I now have an offer as an AWS Cloud Support Engineer for a newly launched region. Because the region is new, many issues are still internal. However I won't be actively building Infra myself. Instead I'll be debugging customer infrastructure issues and escalating internally. My motivation for the role is the AWS internals exposure, partly the brand on the CV for long term career leverage. I want to return to hands-on cloud engineering after this chapter. I would obviously continue with Open Source next to this job and build some demo setups with Terraform. However I am wondering whether trading 18 months of active building for AWS brand and internals knowledge a reasonable calculated bet? Or will it be tricky to move back into a hands on engineering role?

Hey everyone, I wanted to get some outside perspective on a career move I'm considering.

My background: ~2 years of cloud engineering experience in consulting. I've mainly administered k8s clusters and built Terraform modules and designed Aws architectures. I also hold Terraform certs.

I now have an offer for AWS Cloud Support Engineer for a newly launched region. Because the region is new, many issues are still internal. However I won't be actively building Terraform modules or operating clusters day to day. Instead I'll be debugging customer infrastructure issues and escalating internally.

My motivation for the role is the AWS internals exposure, partly the brand on the CV for long term career leverage. I want to return to hands-on cloud engineering after this chapter. I would obviously continue with Open Source next to this job and build some demo setups with Terraform.

however I am wondering wheter trading 18 months of active building for AWS brand and internals knowledge a reasonable calculated bet? Or does support engineering hurt a cloud engineering career more than the brand compensates for?

My dream has always been to work at a Faang company during my studies. Having some experience under my belt now and getting invited to interviews there, I wanted to know what the virtue / signaling of working there is like in 2026? Especially in Europe, as there are way fever openings compared to the US.