Channel partners and IT shops everywhere have major needs for workers with cloud engineer certification to help drive businesses forward. To help provide those critical workers, the Linux Foundation has created a new bootcamp training series.

The Cloud Engineer Bootcamp is a six-month, self-paced program. It includes five training courses and two certification exams. It is designed for everyone from newbies to IT experts who want cloud engineer certification to further their careers.

The online courses for the bootcamp include instructor support, and begin with Linux at the operating system layer. The courses move up the stack to cover DevOps, cloud, containers and more to provide a well-rounded cloud engineering education. The Linux Foundation planned and created the program before the COVID-19 pandemic affected the world; yet, it fits those who need at-home training.

The courses include:

The exams include:

Students in the online courses will also use an online discussion forum as part of the program. Instructors will offer live virtual office hours to talk with students five days a week. Participants who spend 15-20 hours per week on the materials can expect to complete the bootcamp in about six months.

According to the Linux Foundation, certified cloud engineer is one of the 15 highest-paying IT jobs in the market. In addition, cloud engineers have a median salary of $150,000, the group says.

The bootcamp costs $999, but through June 17, to introduce the program, the fee is just $599. The money covers program access for one year for applicants, including all content and labs.

More Cloud Engineers Badly Needed

The real shortage of trained cloud engineers is a huge problem for businesses of all sizes and types today.

Linux Foundation’s Clyde Seepersad

“We hear this from vendors at events and in conversations when we talk about what they need,” Clyde Seepersad, the foundation’s general manager of training and certification, told Channel Futures. “They’re asking, ‘What can you guys do to make more talent available?’ It’s not just a Bay Area or Austin problem. It’s a global challenge.”

The Linux Foundation wanted to make the cloud engineer certification bootcamp program affordable.

“It cannot be a $10,000 bootcamp because you’d narrow the audience severely,” said Seepersad.

The program targets both IT pros with tech experience and those with none. For IT staffers working with legacy technologies for years, this will give them cloud experience and credibility, said Seepersad.

The program helps the Foundation make such training easier for participants to access, he said.

“This is a challenge we’ve been grappling with ever since we established our training department,” he said. “It began with, ‘How do we define an easier front door in the age of cloud?’ What we see in the data is, there isn’t really a clear road map for how to start your career.”

Cloud technologies and open source software are not taught in colleges today with any depth, said Seepersad. Instead, colleges teach …

… students the courses they need as part of their original accreditations. The problem is that the accreditations often have not caught up with cloud and open source.

“So by the time students check all the boxes for their needed courses, their four years are gone,” he said. “Colleges are aware that there is this gap in skills that people need in any sort of tech job. They realize these aren’t really being covered properly.”

Finding the Right Talent Remains Tough

For hiring managers, this is a universal problem inside companies today, said Seepersad.

“Everybody who is trying to hire tech talent has the same frustration,” he said. “You can hire someone through LinkedIn, but as fast as you hire someone, someone else is being poached from you so it’s a zero sum game.”

The development of the bootcamp curriculum came through listening to the market, he said. The Linux Foundation wanted to cover the right things without making the coursework overwhelming.

The Linux Foundation curated the courses from existing training offerings. Additional supplemental coursework is also accessible for free as part of the program. Students can communicate with each other and their teachers to help succeed.

Outcert’s Lee Marer

“Candidates are given a worksheet with course sequences and recommendations on how long they should take to complete,” he said. “They map out their own study plans.”

Lee Marer, CTO of Outcert, said he hears regularly about how hard it is to find cloud engineers. Outcert, a technology education platform that partners with the Linux Foundation, connects with B2C and B2B customers.

“Those customers consistently talk to us about where to get training” for cloud engineer certification and more, said Marer. “It’s not an option anymore. They have to have it. People are requesting this.”