With cloud computing becoming more prevalent in companies, both large and small, the global requirement for professionals is steadily on the rise and over a million jobs in the sector will be created in the country by 2022, according to a report by Ed-tech platform for executives Great Learning. It further reveals that companies are currently investing 4.5 times the rate of traditional IT spending in cloud infrastructure, a trend that is expected to grow even faster by 2020.

In the coming years, however, nearly all IT expenditure will be on a private, public or hybrid cloud environment, making all IT roles, in some sense, cloud computing roles, it added.

The Indian cloud computing market, currently at $2.2 billion, is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2020 with an annual growth rate of more than 30 per cent. The rapid growth of cloud-native services and increasing acceptance of cloud-based environments as secure coupled with a need to save costs are driving companies away from traditional data centres (DCs) to cloud environments.

In India, IT giants are now building solutions on the cloud rather than on physical infrastructure due to increased flexibility, scalability and speed. Furthermore, “A quick search on popular job boards shows hundreds of open jobs in various roles that require cloud computing expertise. An estimated 1 million new jobs will be created in India by the year 2022 as more companies adopt cloud technology.”

According to the report, there are about 18 million cloud computing jobs worldwide at the moment with a salary of over $1,00,000 per annum. The salary for a leading cloud professional can go as high as $2,80,000 per annum, it indicated.

In India, the salary for an entry level (0-2 years of experience) cloud professional is around Rs 5-7 lakh which is significantly greater than that of a traditional IT engineer, who would earn about Rs 3-5 lakh. The salary for an associate working in cloud with less than 5 years of experience can range from Rs 12-19 lakh and a mid-level manager can easily command upwards of Rs 20 lakh. Cloud architects and other specialists with 10-15 years of experience can earn over Rs 30 lakh, it added.

More than 1.7 million cloud jobs worldwide remained open as technical recruiters face difficulties in filling out job vacancies in cloud.

The report further added that unlike IT skill shortages in the past, solving this skills gap is challenging, as cloud brings a new set of skills which haven’t been needed in the past. This gap comes at a time when almost two-thirds of global enterprises are planning, implementing or using cloud computing, and more than 50 per cent of businesses agree that cloud computing is a high priority.

The report is based on conversations with senior cloud experts, recruiting managers as well as subject matter experts and is supplemented by data from high-quality industry research reports.