Every job description I see asks for "experience in AWS, Azure, or GCP." As a beginner, is it better to become an expert in one platform or should I try to get basic certifications in all three to appear more "multi-cloud" ready? I don't want to be a jack of all trades and master of none.
3 answers
The consensus in the industry is to "go deep" on one provider first. Once you understand how to manage identity, networking, and compute on AWS, those skills are roughly 80% transferable to Azure or GCP—they just use different names for the same services. For example, an AWS S3 bucket is very similar to an Azure Blob Storage container. If you try to learn all three at once as a beginner, you will likely get confused by the different consoles and CLI commands. Master one Associate-level cert first, then look at a second provider to broaden your marketability.
Do you think the "multi-cloud" trend is actually a requirement for junior roles, or is it mostly for senior architects?
Focus on the underlying technology like Kubernetes and Terraform. Those are vendor-neutral and will make you valuable regardless of the cloud platform.
This is the best advice here. If you know Infrastructure as Code (IaC), switching from AWS to Azure becomes a much smaller hurdle.
In my experience, Mark, juniors are rarely expected to manage multi-cloud deployments. Companies usually hire a junior to support a specific team that is already settled on one vendor. However, being aware of how different clouds connect (like using Megaport or Equinix for inter-cloud connectivity) is a "plus" that can make you stand out during the interview process.