IT Career Guide

Azure Cloud Engineer

What an Azure Cloud Engineer does in the UK, typical salary, required skills, AZ-104 certification, and the realistic path in.

Azure Cloud Engineers build, manage and secure the cloud infrastructure organisations increasingly depend on, virtual machines, networking, storage and identity, in Microsoft Azure. As organisations continue migrating away from on-premise infrastructure, this is one of the fastest-growing UK IT careers.

Typical UK salary
£32,000 to £45,000 to start, rising to £65,000+ with experience.

Who is it suitable for?

People who enjoy technical problem-solving and are comfortable with continuous learning, cloud platforms evolve quickly.

Can career changers enter?

Rarely a first IT role. Most Azure engineers build up from IT support or Microsoft 365 administration first, then specialise into cloud.

Skills required

Azure Portal and resource management
Virtual machines and networking
Azure Entra ID and RBAC
Storage and backup
PowerShell and Azure CLI
Cost management

Recommended certifications

AZ-104 (Azure Administrator Associate), the core certification for this role

Career progression

Azure Cloud Engineer → Senior Cloud Engineer → Cloud Architect or DevOps Engineer.

Start training for this role

Azure Administrator Programme

See the course