Moving from 2nd line support to Infrastructure Engineer – what should I expect?
I’ve recently accepted a new role as an Infrastructure Engineer in a fully cloud-based environment and I’m due to start next month.
I’ve spent around 10 years working in second-line IT support and been brought in for 3rd line investigations, for the same organisation in a hybrid environment. It’s quite a siloed environment, and over the last few years I’ve felt like I’d reached the ceiling of what I could learn from primarily supporting end-user devices.
I found myself becoming much more interested in what was happening further up the stack – cloud infrastructure, networking, identity, Intune, automation, security, etc.
I started studying outside work, took some Microsoft certification exams earlier this year, built some things in Azure and eventually decided to throw my hat in the ring for a few infrastructure/cloud roles.
To my surprise, I interviewed successfully and got the job.
I’m under no illusion that passing certifications and doing labs is the same as managing a real production environment. This is going to be the beginning of my actual cloud/infrastructure career
and there’s going to be a huge amount I don’t know.
For anyone who’s made a similar jump, or who currently works as an Infrastructure/Cloud Engineer, what should I realistically expect during my first 3–6 months?
I’m particularly interested in what junior/new Infrastructure Engineers actually end up doing day-to-day, what experienced engineers expect a new person to already know versus learn on the job, and anything you wish you’d understood before starting your first infrastructure role.
I’m trying to learn as much as I can before starting, but I’m also conscious that trying to learn Azure, networking, IaC, Linux, security, etc. all at once probably isn’t the answer.
Any advice or experiences would be appreciated.