Whether you call it DevOps, Cloud, or Platform Engineering (or whatever the next hot title is), there is always going to be a need for engineers whose job is making things easier for other engineers. We are the ones behind the scenes building the tools and infrastructure that support the people working on products and services. The path into this work is rarely clear-cut. I started as a backend engineer at a small startup and slowly took on more DevOps work until I jumped in as a full-time DevOps engineer. Other people I have worked with came from frontend or IT. There isn’t one route.

#Letting junior engineers fail

The hardest part of mentoring junior engineers for me is letting them fail. Sometimes I know the answer off the top of my head and it is really tempting to just give it to them, but when I do that, they miss the chance to actually understand it. They need room where it is safe to fail, and I have to hold back and let them stumble.

#Problem-solving over answers

Technical skills alone aren’t enough. Cloud engineers need to be problem-solvers first, so I push critical thinking. Instead of giving answers, I have junior engineers work through real scenarios. If we are dealing with a broken Kubernetes deployment, for example, I will guide them through diagnosing and troubleshooting it themselves and only step in when they hit a dead end. That kind of hands-on experience is how they get comfortable with the unexpected, and you can’t really get it from a textbook.

#Learning from mistakes

When a mentee makes a mistake, like bringing down production with a misconfiguration, I care a lot more about what we learn from it than about the failure itself. Mistakes are expensive, but over time those lessons make for a more careful, thoughtful engineer.

#A blameless culture

I make a point of keeping postmortems and documentation blameless. If blame is coming down on the team, I take it on myself. My team needs to feel safe bringing their mistakes forward, otherwise they will try to hide them, and nobody grows from that.

#Open communication

Our work is tough. We context-switch more than most engineering roles, jumping between Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and everything in between, and with that many moving parts it is easy to feel lost. That is why I am big on open communication. Junior engineers should always feel comfortable asking questions, no matter how small they seem. Asking usually means they are paying attention and want to get it right.

#Ownership

I also want junior engineers to fully own something, whether it is a project or a deployment. Having something that is theirs to grow, troubleshoot, and improve gives them a sense of pride, and later it lets them look back and see how far they have come.

#Continuous feedback

I don’t believe in waiting for annual or even twice-a-year reviews to give feedback. It should be regular and actionable. I give constructive feedback in every one-on-one, always privately. When a junior engineer does something great, though, I make sure to celebrate it publicly, because recognition helps people grow as much as criticism does.

#Completing the mentorship loop

Once my junior engineers get to a certain point, I encourage them to start mentoring too, whether that is helping a new team member or leading a workshop on our tooling. Teaching is one of the best ways to really understand something yourself, and it keeps the cycle going.

#Mentoring is a long-term investment

Mentoring pays off for the whole team, not only the person being mentored. I care about this because a team that trusts each other and learns from each other is far more capable than one with a couple of unicorn engineers who have all the answers. Cloud engineering keeps changing, and mentoring each other is how we make sure the next generation of engineers is ready to lead it.

#TL;DR

Mentoring junior cloud engineers comes down to giving them a safe place to learn, letting them fail, and pushing them to solve problems themselves. Critical thinking, ownership, and regular feedback help them grow. Mistakes are part of the process, so keep the culture blameless and make it easy to ask questions. When they are ready, get them mentoring others. The whole team benefits.