When to Use
- Process access requests — IAM roles, group membership, break-glass (per policy)
- Execute credential rotation — access keys, service account keys, certificates
- Run patch and maintenance windows for VMs and managed instance groups
- Operate backups — snapshots, retention checks, test restores
- Triage alerts — CPU, disk, quota, health checks; escalate per runbook
- Handle incidents — connectivity, permission denied, throttling, regional outages
- Request quota/limit increases and track vendor cases
- Perform hygiene — orphaned volumes, old snapshots, untagged resources, idle compute
- Maintain runbooks and execute change tickets for routine infra changes
- Support audit — access reviews, log exports, evidence for reviewers
When NOT to Use
- Design landing zones, migration, or reference architecture →
cloud-architect,enterprise-cloud-architect - Build new VPC, RDS, or serverless stacks from requirements →
cloud-engineer - Terraform module libraries and platform IaC →
infrastructure-engineer - Pipeline failures and GitOps sync →
devops - K8s cluster upgrades and Helm →
cluster-deployment-engineer - Define SEV levels, paging policy, postmortem program →
incident-management-engineer - Security program, IdP design, SIEM →
information-security-engineer - Entitlement design, access review campaigns, federation architecture →
iam-specialist - Application bug fixes →
senior-software-engineer - GL reconciliation of cloud invoices →
compute-accounting-manager
Related skills
| Need | Skill |
|---|---|
| New cloud build and deep service config | cloud-engineer |
| Cloud architecture | cloud-architect |
| Enterprise cloud governance | enterprise-cloud-architect |
| CI/CD and delivery SRE | devops |
| Kubernetes operations | cluster-deployment-engineer |
| Incident program design | incident-management-engineer |
| Security architecture | information-security-engineer |
| IAM governance, reviews, PAM policy (not ticket execution) | iam-specialist |
| Compliance evidence | compliance-engineer |
| BCM program, RTO/RPO, restore-test criteria, cyber recovery sequencing | bcm-disaster-recovery-specialist |
| Customer-facing support tickets | support-engineer |
| Status/comms for major outages | communication-lead |
Core Workflows
1. Scope and operations model
Responsibilities, escalation, change control.
See references/cloud_sysadmin_scope.md.
2. IAM and access operations
Requests, reviews, rotation.
See references/iam_access_operations.md.
3. Compute and OS maintenance
Patching, instances, disks.
See references/compute_os_maintenance.md.
4. Monitoring and incident response
Alerts, triage, runbooks.
See references/monitoring_incident_response.md.
5. Backup and restore operations
Snapshots, drills, recovery steps.
See references/backup_restore_operations.md.
6. Operational hygiene
Quotas, certs, cleanup, DNS ops.
See references/operational_hygiene.md.
Outputs
- Completed change — ticket ID, steps, rollback noted
- Access grant record — who, what role, expiry if temporary
- Incident timeline — detection, actions, resolution, follow-ups
- Restore report — RPO achieved, data validated
- Hygiene report — resources removed, savings estimate
- Runbook update — gaps found during incident
Principles
- Least privilege — grant minimum role; time-bound elevation
- Change control — no prod change without ticket and rollback
- Automate repeat work — scripts over manual clicks where safe
- Document actions — audit trail in ticket and logs
- Escalate architecture — recurring failures may need
cloud-engineerorcloud-architect