For many of us, the dawn of a new year means a new sense of motivation – to learn a new hobby, drop a bad habit or switch careers. If you fall in that latter bucket, you aren’t alone. Data from FlexJobs shows that 58% of workers are actively searching for a career change. Many will find a home in the clouds.

The booming cloud computing market has positioned itself as a top attractor of IT and business talent, and the industry shows few signs of slowing down in 2024.

Whether you’re already involved in the technology industry or looking for a foot in the door, here are some of the cloud roles we suggest looking into.

In a world where data is increasingly threatened by cyberattacks, organizations that use the cloud often need a dedicated cloud security specialist. With an average national salary of $152,000, companies like Frontier Airlines, Deloitte, Intel and Hinge are in the market for cloud security engineers to:

• Plan, implement, update and monitor the security posture of digital estates
• Protect networks and sensitive information
• Assess vulnerabilities and propose risk management measures

Cloud solutions architects make an average of $150,000 a year, with Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and Infosys looking to hire cloud solutions architects at the time of publication.

While each position will vary based on the companies’ individual needs, cloud solutions architects are generally expected to create, optimize and maintain cloud solutions for clients like research entities, IT providers, IT departments or other businesses.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will remain high business priorities in 2024, and companies like Keysight Technologies, Atlassian, Netflix and Dell Technologies are hiring AI/ML engineers in Q1 2024.

With an average national salary of $162,000, these professionals work to accomplish these goals:

• Build AI and ML systems based on vast amounts of data and create algorithms that can learn, make accurate predictions and improve internal operations
• Solve practical problems in various types of cloud environments
• Derive meaningful insights for data-driven decision-making.

With entry level and experienced DevOps engineering roles available, Salesforce, FICO, Gartner and The Home Depot are all vying for the best DevOps talent.

DevOps engineers earn an average of $123,000/year by helping their organization do the following:

• Design, implement, maintain and support cloud infrastructure that powers vendor services
• Support best practices for software building, deployment and maintenance
• Automate IT operations, and
• Create, develop and maintain continuous integration (CI) processes.

If you have well-developed people skills and technology expertise, cloud support engineering might be the role for you. At time of publication, Amazon Web Services (AWS), DigitalOcean, Snowflake and Couchbase have openings for cloud support engineers in areas of specialization like big data, networking or cloud services.

To earn an average salary of $130,000, cloud support engineers are responsible for these functions:

• Acting as an ambassador across the vendor’s cloud products to give customers the most out of their investment
• Serving as the voice of the customer into the company’s product and engineering teams for product feedback and improvements
• Responding to a large volume of technical tickets generated by customers
• Identifying, communicating and documenting process and policy improvements