Day Two Cloud 189: The Cloud Network Engineer Career Path With Kam Agahian

Today on Day Two Cloud we explore what it takes to transition from traditional networking to a career as a cloud network engineer. Guest Kam Agahian shares insights from his own career journey about what’s the same and what’s different between on-prem and cloud networking, what skills might you want to pick up to make the transition, where cloud networking and security intersect, recommended certifications, dealing with SD-WAN and Networks-as-a-Service (NaaS), and more. Kam is Director of Cloud Engineering at Oracle Cloud, but this is not a sponsored show. Kam is here just as himself. We discuss: * Differences and similarities between on-prem and cloud networking * The role of NetOps and/or Infrastructure as Code in cloud networking * Whether it’s easier for a traditional network engineer or a cloud-focused person to make the leap * Networking skills that will translate well to the cloud * Labbing and learning suggestions * Certifications * More Show Links: @kagahian – Kam Agahian on Twitter Kam Agahian on LinkedIn Cloud Network Engineering: A Closer Look – NANOG (via YouTube) How to Break into a Cloud Engineering Career? – Kam Agahian via Packet Pushers All of Kam’s Packet Pushers posts The Mechanics of Regret (Demo 2001), by incite – Bandcamp (if you miss the Day Two Cloud musical intro) Transcript: [00:00:01.490] – Ned Hey, everybody, this is Ned with a quick note about Day Two Cloud. We’ve decided to drop the intro music for future episodes. Some folks found it a bit jarring, and you know, that’s not a good way to start your podcast experience. So we’ve decided to skip the music and get right to the important stuff, the awesome guests and their epic knowledge. If you’d like more metal in your diet, we’ve added a link to the show notes for this episode to the bandcamp site that has the entire song and the EP it’s from, would you believe it’s, 22 years old. Wow. Anyway, thanks to everyone for the feedback. If you have suggestions, comments, et cetera, please don’t hesitate to reach out via Twitter or the contact form at multicloud IO. Thanks, everyone, and enjoy the episode. [00:00:48.590] – Ethan Welcome to day two cloud. [00:00:50.260] – Ethan We got a career show for you today that is how to be a Cloud Network Engineer. I was at Nanog North American Network Operators Group. Their meeting that they held in February 2023 down in Atlanta, and I heard Kam give a talk on this topic, and it just interested me so much and a lot of his slides and his ideas that we invited him to come on and have a chin wag about it. So this is not a rehash of his talk? Exactly. You’ve already heard that talk at Nano. We took it in some different directions and got some more details and angles from Kam. Didn’t we, Ned? [00:01:22.870] – Ned Yeah, I really wanted to differentiate what is a traditional network engineer versus the cloud network Engineer, and also what additional skills a cloud network engineer should pick up that you might not already have. And he had some interesting responses to that. [00:01:38.400] – Ethan Yeah, he definitely did. Now, Kam wanted us to make one other point,